


nobody has to know (nobody but me)

by xeah



Series: remember me (for who we were) [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bilingual Lance (Voltron), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Blood and Injury, British English btw, Comfort/Angst, Cuban Lance (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Homesick Lance (Voltron), Hurt Lance (Voltron), Insecure Lance (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Korean Keith (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, My First Work in This Fandom, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Protective Keith (Voltron), Socially Awkward Keith (Voltron), Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), Witches, and all em Keith tags, art is so welcome, basically lots of AUs mashed into canon divergence, dafuq with so many tags, look at all em Lance tags, my attempts at humour, scary tags sound scary, this is part 1 of a 2 part series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 06:09:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 45,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13358145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xeah/pseuds/xeah
Summary: Lance has a secret, and he’s taking it to the grave –except, he didn’t think the ‘taking it to the grave’ bit would happen quite so soon.When the team head planetside on a diplomatic mission, Lance can’t decide if he’s ecstatic about it, or about to endure an intense bout of homesickness. Sure, the planet looks cool, the aliens themselves are pretty chill considering they’ve singlehandedly fended off Galra attacks up until now. But thanks to Pidge making the team clocks that run on Earth time, Lance knows that it’s almost his nineteenth birthday.Yeah, he’s gonna go with the homesickness.Unfortunately for him, the aliens they visit have two distinct qualities that, in any other circumstance, Lance would find cool; the ability to sense emotions, and the complete inability to keep secrets. That extends to their allies, as well.He probably would have continued thinking those were pretty amazing skills –until the aliens sense negative emotions between the Paladins, and demand that to secure an alliance, the team must heal the dissent brewing in the fine cracks between each other thanks to the secrets they’re keeping, no matter how trivial.Yeah. Homesickness probably wasn’t the right way to go.





	1. i look inside myself (and see my heart is black)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [chapter 1 is the story itself, chapter 2 is Spanish translations]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Paint It Black by Hidden Citizens, fic title from Freak by Jay Sean. 
> 
> I ship Klance, all the way, I will die with this ship, but this fic doesn’t solely feature the development of Klance. Like, it’s obviously hinted at, very strongly, but it’s not (yet) the focus of the story.
> 
> This is the first part of a two-part series I am planning. It’s short compared to the second fic I’m already working on, and it’s more of an introduction than anything else, so that Part Two isn’t so cluttered and messy (as uncluttered and un-messy as a story that features heavy worldbuilding can get tbh). I aged the characters up by roughly a year.
> 
> Lance = 19 [I turned 19 myself today whoot-whoot I’m so happy I finished this in time to post on my bday]  
> Keith = 20 [idk I just really like the idea of Keith being a year older than Lance]  
> Pidge = 16 [smol child]  
> Shiro = 27 [idk, in canon is he 25 or 26?]  
> Hunk = 18 [IT'S HIS BIRTHDAY TODAY WHOOT]
> 
> This is my first fic, and tbh I actually live off of comments, so any feedback you have and any thoughts on this fic and what you’d like to see in the next would be so immensely appreciated! Plus, you’ll be keeping me alive.
> 
> I am not kidding. I live on comments on my stories.
> 
> My dumbass: I’ll aim for 10k for my first ever proper fic, for my beautiful bois Klance, for the wonderful and amazing Voltron fandom.  
> Fic: *gets to 15k when I’m halfway through the fic*  
> Me: …okay, revise that to 20k.  
> Reality: *bitch-slaps me with a 43k monstrosity*  
> Me: when the fuck
> 
> TW: seizure, blood, injury

Lance wakes up the morning before his nineteenth birthday floating a clear foot above his bed.

He probably would have gone on blissfully sleeping, totally unaware that his levitation was acting up while he was unconscious, _again,_ if Allura’s voice hadn’t sounded over the Castle’s speakers and politely demanded that all Paladins promptly wake up for that morning’s training drills. He’s not quite sure if the sharp tone in her voice to pointedly call out his name can be considered polite, but that’s the thing about princesses trained in diplomacy; you have no idea when they’re being plain rude or if they’re just being fair.

Needless to say, blinking awake to find himself staring in befuddled confusion _at_ his bed instead of being _in_ it, should at least elicit some sort of surprised shriek. It doesn’t. He’s only confused about it for .5 seconds before he realizes what happened –and no, zero gravity is not the answer.

If only.

Lance wrinkles his nose and glares at the bed like it has personally offended his ancestors. “Ay, quiznack.”

He thought he had this under control. Maybe not the other stuff, he’ll admit, that stuff he barely has a chance to practice with so it just pretty much lies dormant most of the time, but at least _this._ This simple baby-level stuff should be in control, dammit _._ This is the fourth time this week, and –if Pidge’s calculations are right, which is a technical surety –it’s only Friday. Ish. Give or take a few hours.

He closes his eyes, brows furrowing as he searches inside himself, in his chest, looking for that invisible and constantly moving band of energy that wraps itself around his heart and is what’s currently the source of his predicament. His lips thin out in exasperation as the energy shirks from his reach, sensing his intentions.

“Ay, ay, no comiences con esto otra vez,” he scolds it, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at its antics. “We don’t have time for this, and it’s _not_ fun waking up to the ceiling version of a face-palm every freakin’ morning. And talking to myself as if that’s a normal thing to do is not a normal thing to do, at all.” He ends in a grumble.

He can feel the energy very obviously grouching as it secedes defeat after some more of his aggressive prodding, and allows Lance to smother it in chains he has to put on it every time it manages to slip through the constraints. It’s tiring, and annoying, and he really wishes he didn’t have to do this at all, but…after so long of this, and hiding what he can do from the only other people he’s around on a regular basis for almost a year now, it’s sort of become a habit.

Step 1: Wake up (if he fell asleep to begin with, which is a toss of the coin on most nights unless training was particularly hard, or he was just plain wiped out from fighting Galra).

Step 2: If his powers don’t act up, congratulations are in order. If his powers decide to give him some hate, spend at least ten minutes first cleaning up its mess.

(One time he accidentally started a fire in his bathroom and didn’t realize it until the smoke was coming out of from the closed door. It was not fun getting rid of sticky bits of what he assumes used to be his towel from the floor.)

Step 3: Get on to chaining his powers down –and keep them in control for literally every waking moment because if he lets that control slip for even a _second,_ the possibility of either sending Keith’s spork flying from his hand or catapulting Pidge’s laptop across the room without actually touching it becomes reality.

(Word of advice; never touch Pidge’s laptop, physically or telekinetically. She might not have known who did it, but she made each and every one of them pay. Even Shiro didn’t escape her wrath. Even Shiro didn’t escape her wrath, and that’s saying something considering _it’s Shiro._ )

It’s tiring. Not draining, exactly, but not a stroll in the park either when he’d like to walk out of his room and not feel like he only got twenty minutes of sleep instead of the eight hours he typically strives for (of which he realistically only gets, at best, two hours of). If he wasn’t just as energetic as he naturally is, he’d probably be exhausted no matter how much sleep he gets.

Luckily, he is an A+ student in Insomnia and Sleep Deprivation 101.

More than tiring, though, is the irritation at how he has to do this _all the time,_ how he has to keep a leash on his powers _all the time,_ how he has to make sure he doesn’t slip up and reveal himself _all the time._ It’s like living with his hands tied behind his back on a permanent basis, secured by cuffs he has to lock on himself.

Truth be told, at this point he’s not entirely sure why he hasn’t told the team yet about himself. He is, he does know why, it’s literally illegal for him to –but they’re out in space. They’re in space, and so far away from it all that he can’t even picture the distance without his head spinning. Surely the laws back home can’t affect him this far away. Surely _that_ war can’t touch him when he’s too far away to be noticed by it, right?

The reminder of just how far from home he is, from everything that _is_ home to him, has his mood plunging to the depths of brooding sorrow. Almost instantaneously, he feels a sharp tugging in his stomach, and he only has time to get half a shriek out before he’s unceremoniously dumped atop his bed, smacking his nose on the pillow hard enough to feel the metal of the frame underneath the pillow, and the blankets he hoards, and the mattress. Ouch.

He lies still for a moment, face buried in his pillow, and lets out a quiet groan as his muscles go lax, tension easing out of him for a few precious moments. His heart stirs restlessly, a need for him to let go, to let him be himself, but he clamps down on it and shoves the feeling into a metal box and throws the box straight into a dark pit, where he can only pray it will obediently stay until he’s ready to let it out.

He turns his head so his cheek rests on the pillow and reaches one limp arm, smacking it around on the table by the bed for a few moments before he almost knocks the digital clock Pidge and Hunk made identical models of for everyone. He scowls at the blue numbers that glow back at him.

07:08 CMT (Castle Morning Time).

_Who wakes up so quiznacking early?_

Oh, that’s right. Lance does. Paladin of the Blue Lion, ex-Garrison student, incurable flirt, bundle of endless insecurities and hoarder of secrets, Lance McClain.

To be fair, the other Paladins have to wake up this early, too. Gods know when Allura and Coran wake up –he’s not entirely sold on the idea that Alteans need sleep like humans do. No way can Allura wake up so early and look so beautiful every day, especially when Lance can see the stress weighing her down, stress she valiantly tries to keep from showing, even though he’s pretty sure Shiro’s noticed. Although that might be because he deals with the same stress, and can more easily see it in others because he sees it in himself, too. Maybe they’re stress-buddies. Is that a thing? Can that be a thing?

He’s interrupted from his nonsensical musings by three thumps on his door, quickly followed by another three that sound vaguely annoyed. He contemplates shoving his head under the pillow and pretending he died before he realizes the person on the other side of the door is the evillest little gremlin known as Pidge, and will not leave until she’s reassured that he’s as awake as she is.

(Debatable. Sometimes Lance wonders if Pidge is actually genuinely awake or an animate zombie that can talk and spews random and complex techno jargon at irregular intervals to fool everyone into thinking she’s awake.)

“Yo, Noodle,” her voice calls through the door. She doesn’t sound as sleepy as Lance still feels, and he honestly wonders when she goes to sleep to sound so… _alive_ at this time. “Allura’s gonna be mad if you’re late for training. Again. Then she’ll make all of us do two more levels with the gladiators to make up for your slack. I am _not_ training more than I have to because of you. It’s too early for that kind of sacrifice.”

Lance drags in as deep a breath as he can, and lets out the longest, most drawn-out and long-suffering sigh he can muster, to which his only answer is another flurry of knocks on the door.

“Lance, get up or Allura’s going to pair you with Keith for the invisible maze again.”

He has never moved so fast as he does then when he leaps out of the bed and practically flies for the door, slamming his hand on the sensor next to it on the wall. Pidge snickers at Lance’s wild mess of hair and the crazed look in his eye when the door slides open to reveal his dishevelled, pre-daily-skincare-routine self.

“Pidge,” he gasps. “Pidge, I will _pay you_ to make sure that doesn’t happen. I will worship the ground you walk on for eternity if you make sure _I don’t get paired with Keith again._ I swear to god, he electrocutes me _for fun._ Please, Pidge, deity of my life, my –”

Pidge shoves Lance, sniggering at him. “Okay, okay, much as I appreciate the grovelling, you can stop. I didn’t get enough sleep to deal with your clinginess this early.”

Lance smiles for a moment, then leans in closer, noting the dark smudges under her eyes. “Enough sleep, or any at all?”

Pidge rolls her eyes so hard, he practically sees them meet the back of her skull. “Oh my fucking _god,_ you sound like Shiro.”

Lance smirks and stands straight, puffing his chest out and putting his hands on his hips as says, in the sharpest voice he can manage at seven flipping oh clock in the morning, _“Language,_ Pidge! You’re sixteen!”

“Whatever,” she waves his antics off and looks down at her watch. “Get moving. You have twenty minutes to get your armour on, grab a bite to eat –there’re some leftovers Hunk saved for you by the way –and get to the training deck. Allura wants to brief us on the Xyphelians after we’re done training, too.”

Lance groans, flopping dramatically against the door, as if he physically cannot hold his weight any longer. “Really, _again?_ Didn’t we already do this yesterday?”

He’s not quite sure how it’s possible that someone a foot shorter than him can look down their nose at him, but somehow, Pidge manages it. “The Princess thought it worth repeating since _someone_ kept zoning out every two minutes.”

Lance laughs nervously, scratching the back of his neck as he looks past Pidge to the empty hall behind them. Yeah, that…he can take the blame for that. Sure, on an ordinary day he’d have paid attention (somewhat), since this diplomatic mission Allura’s managed to wrangle with an alien race the Alteans used to deal with is super important not just to the Princess, but to the Coalition as well. Sure, he knows that it’s important he’s at least partially aware of what to do, and what not to do while planetside.

Like, shaking hands might be an ordinary Earth custom, but what if Xyphelians don’t have hands? Or they do but it’s rude as hell to try shaking them? Humans can be plenty weird, too.

But logic no longer applied for him when his stomach turned into a black pit when he remembered what’s coming up for him tomorrow when Hunk told Shiro what date it was, and the reason why his powers have been acting so out of whack the last couple of days (more so than usual, at any rate).

His birthday. Lance has been _dreading_ his nineteenth birthday ever since he was old enough to realize what it means.

Almost as if she knows what he’s thinking, Pidge’s face softens imperceptibly. “Hey, you okay?”

He blinks, rousing himself from openly brooding. “Sure I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Maybe it’s because it’s your birthday tomorrow? And I know you get homesick, and we’re not exactly home, so…I was just wondering how you’re doing.”

_Not good. An airlock’s looking better every minute. In fact, I’m pretty sure Allie would send me hurtling through one if she were here right now._

“Aw,” Lance puts a hand to his chest, wiping away an imaginary tear from his eye as his bottom lip wobbles. “You _do_ care. I had no idea!”

 _And wait,_ he thinks, a second too late. _How do you know it’s my birthday?_ He’s pretty sure he hasn’t said anything about it, considering how much he wishes it _wasn’t_ his birthday. Although, Hunk does know when his birthday is, so maybe Hunk told Pidge. Or maybe Pidge hacked into the Garrison’s system to find out, back when they were still in the Garrison. You honestly never know when it comes to Pidge.

Pidge frowns impressively at him. “You know what, never mind. Pretend I didn’t ask.” She turns her back on Lance’s snickering and starts down the hall, but before she can take more than two steps, she turns back and gives Lance a long, searching look that has him squirming on the inside from the scrutiny. “But you know you can talk to us, right? I mean, you get homesick, and I’m crap with feelings, Keith’s worse than me, but there’s still Hunk, and Coran, and Shiro. Even Allura. Maybe.”

He chuckles at that. “Maybe.” He pushes off from leaning on the door, giving her a two-fingered salute as he turns back to his room. “Thanks for that, Pidgeon. And also –keep Allura from pairing me and Keith for the maze, _please_.”

“No promises.”

“I’ll make the food goo machine attack you again.”

Pidge scoffs. “No way, that was only because Sendak hacked the Castle’s systems.”

Lance ignores the instinctive urge to shiver at the name, and instead lets the most lecherous grin creep on his face. “You never know, Pidgey, you never know.”

Pidge rolls her eyes again and continues down the hall with a vague wave back at him. Even though he knows she can’t see him, he waves back, and makes sure that she’s turned the corner and isn’t going to suddenly spring back and say something else (she’s done this before, for the sole purpose of getting an embarrassing picture of Lance leaping mid-air with the most ridiculous face ever. All attempts at finding material to blackmail her into deleting that picture’s existence has insofar been futile) before he lets the jovial mask on his face slip off.

He sighs heavily as he checks that his necklace is still securely looped around his neck and hidden under his clothes, and goes about changing into the black flight suit before strapping on his armour, trying to ignore the stone sitting in his throat that is the reminder of his birthday, and what it means that he’s turning nineteen.

He ends up being two minutes late after he grabs the food goo snack Hunk somehow managed to harden into a protein-bar-esque thing and munches on it on his way to the training deck, finishing strapping on his white-and-blue plated chest armour, and making sure his bayard is securely in place at his hip. Two minutes, two measly minutes, though, is apparently two minutes too late for Allura.

Everyone’s already there by the time he walks in. Hunk and Pidge are talking excitedly about something, Hunk looking carefully interested while Pidge looks like she’s practically vibrating on the spot with eagerness. Shiro is showing Keith some combat move, giving a slow and deliberate demonstration of how to deliver the perfect upper right hook punch. Keith’s watching and listening with such focused intensity that Lance wants to tease him for it, but he doesn’t.

Upper right hook punches look easy, but they’re _not._

And he’s not in the mood, not when that rock is still lodged in his throat, not when his mind keeps throwing images of laughing teal blue waters for eyes ruffling his hair as he tries to get away, or a sweet melodic voice humming a tune for him to fall asleep to, or good-naturedly taking the ribbing from his friends for being put-off at missing that one shot out of twenty, or the pride that filled him to the brim when Allie stood tall and proud beside their father and made her final choice, or –

“Lance, nice of you to join us,” Allura calls. Her voice snaps him out of his brooding reverie, and he looks up to where she stands in her place up in the observatory. If he squints hard enough, he thinks he can see the space mice sitting on her shoulders, and –is one of them on top of her head? Coran, standing beside her, sends Lance a cheery wave that he reciprocates before shooting his signature finger guns at Allura.

“Don’t worry, Princess,” he croons, a self-assured smirk curling his lips, slipping the mask on so no one can see how much he just wants to curl in a ball and forget everything exists. He cocks a brow when he catches sight of Keith’s irritated scowl and crossed arms before shaking the sight off and turning back to the Princess. “I’d never miss a chance to be brutally beaten by semi-sentient robots that an Altean child can safely deliver on its ass.”

“Language,” Shiro automatically reprimands, shaking his head with a rueful smile on his face as he walks to the middle of the training deck.

“Oops, sorry,” he raises his hands up in mock surrender. “I forgot some of us are still underage.”

“I will set the food goo machine on _you,_ Noodle,” Pidge warns, reaching out and poking his arm.

“Sure, sure, Pidgey.”

Pidge shoots him a disgruntled look; to which he answers by very maturely sticking his tongue out at her. Hunk nudges his shoulder and Lance gives him a good morning fist-bump as they follow Shiro to the middle, Keith trailing close behind, where they wait for Allura’s instructions on what ‘training’ to expect. They gather in a loose circle, Hunk on Lance’s right, Keith on his left, Pidge on Keith’s left, and Shiro between Pidge and Hunk.

The speakers crackle a little as Allura comes back from presumably conferring with Coran about what best way to beat the Paladins up, all in the name of whipping them to worthy defenders of the universe.

“Right, Paladins,” she says, brisk and straight to the point. “Today’s going to be a fairly simple training session, on account of how you need to keep your strength up for landing on Xyphelia in a few hours’ time.”

“Did she just say ‘fairly simple’?” Lance whispers. Hunk shrugs.

“It’s not that hard,” Keith comments idly, and Lance turns to him with an exaggerated wide-eyed stare.

“‘Not that hard’?” he repeats, stunned. “Have you not been around the last dozen training sessions?”

“I have.” He answers blandly. “Have you?”

Lance narrows his eyes. Okay, so maybe he’s late for most –fine, all –training sessions, but at least he always _gets_ there. Eventually. At some point. He _makes it,_ okay? “Well, not everyone lives in the training room like a certain mullet.”

“I don’t have a mullet,” he snaps back automatically.

Lance smirks. “Whatever ya say, Paul McCartney.”

Keith splutters indignantly at that, and Pidge bursts out laughing at the red blush creeping over Keith’s face and lighting up his ears through aforementioned mullet, Hunk being kind enough to hide his snickers behind his hand. Even Shiro has twitching lips before he schools his expression to one of what a leader should look like. It’s strained, though –Lance feels an odd bursting sense of accomplishment, of _pride,_ at making Shiro smile, even just a little.

Allura’s voice sounds confused as it comes on the speakers again, and Lance is sure she doesn’t know the speakers are still on. “What is a ‘paul mccartney’?”

“No idea, Princess,” Coran’s voice is a little muffled, but still audible. “Might be some type of hair product, based on context. Might give it a try myself. It’s not easy maintaining this beauty.”

She hums thoughtfully at that, Pidge almost wheezing at this point as Keith glowers at her. Lance looks up just in time to see Allura straighten her shoulders and don a serious face again. “Paladins, please pay attention while I tell you what you’ll be doing for today.”

Allura goes on to explain her training schedule for that morning. Easy stretches beforehand to loosen the limbs of the last clingy vestiges of sleep and to prevent any unwanted injury, followed by light sparring against one another in rotation for however long Allura keeps them at it.

Lance ends up sparring against Keith _and_ Shiro three times (translation; they hand him his ass three times, but he’d like to point out that he holds his own against Keith for two minutes longer than he yesterday, thanks) before Allura calls the sparring quits and moves them on to the next part of their training.

The gladiators _and_ the drones.

Lances hates the drones. Not as much as he hates fake-Rover for getting him nearly blown up when he protected Coran from the exploding crystal, but the drones are cutting it pretty close.

They spend a good long while with the drones, switching up their respective skills with their weapons. They’re pushed out of their comfort zones whilst simultaneously working together, as a team, to take down the gladiators coupled with the flying drones that zip around so fast, Lance is barely able to get them in his sights to shoot them down. If he uses his powers to make himself move just a little faster, to make the drones themselves fly around just a little slower, well, who can blame him? It’s not like any of the other Paladins will notice anyways.

(Unless Coran notices the programmed speeds of the drones slowing down for some inexplicable reason. But then again, it’s not like he’ll jab a finger in Lance’s direction and yell, _Aha, I’ve caught you!_ )

(…at least he hopes not.)

Shit –small shit, but shit nonetheless because it stinks no matter how you smell it –hits the proverbial fan when Lance forgets one small not-minor-and-inconvenient-at-all detail, lulled into a false sense of security just because he woke up _one morning_ in a more peaceful fashion than he usually does.

The voices.

How the quiznacking hell could he have been so _stupid_ to forget the voices?!

Just because he woke up _this_ morning without their whisperings in his ear, he temporarily, _stupidly,_ forgot that his powers aren’t the only thing he has to keep a tight leash on. While his powers are relatively easy to control, even on bad days, the voices…they are not easy to control at all.

And that’s on the good days.

**_:control control how funny you’re an idiot you’re an idiot such a stupid stupid idiot you’re better off dead they don’t need you:_ **

Lance is covering Pidge’s back, keeping the drones from firing shots at her literally exposed back as she lassos her bayard to twine around the gladiator’s ankles and electrocute it, doing his best to ignore the surprise and unwanted return of the voices, when they _scream_.

It’s a high-pitched, keening sound, so loud that he freezes and instinctively wants to clap his hands over his ears, but his hands are holding his rifle. He can’t just let go of it, not when his fight-or-flight instincts suddenly kick into high gear at the scream in his mind that only he can hear, so his shoulders rise up in a pathetic attempt to cover his ears.

A rush of cool air flows around Lance’s mind, encompassing him and purring gently at his frazzled nerves even as the sense of Blue growling at the voices fills his ears, so intense he can feel it vibrating in his bones. The scream ends as abruptly as it began at Blue’s protective stance around Lance’s mind, tapering off into a quiet whimper that fades into nothing. Soon, all Lance can feel from the inside of his head is Blue’s purring, crooning at him as she curls around him like a mother protecting her precious little cub.

It all –all of it, the voices warping Lance’s insecurities and throwing them at him like rocks, the scream, Blue’s rush of protectiveness –takes less than three seconds, tops, but it’s enough. He only has time to send a quick bolt of thanks to Blue for her help, as temporary as it is, before he comes to. Lance’s eyes widen when realizes he’s frozen in place, with Shiro yelling at him to get him to keep moving.

He snaps out of whatever stupid reverie he got caught up in and shouts Pidge’s name when a drone zeroes in on the temporary weakness – ** _:you, you, always you, can’t do anything right:_** _–_ and just manages to knock its beam off course before it can hit her. The errant shot ends up striking the ground a little too close to Keith’s feet, however, but all of Keith’s extra training pays off as his nimbly jumps out of the way, light as a dancer on his feet.

“Lance!” Shiro’s sharp voice cuts through Lance’s bleared attention, and he forces himself to focus on _that,_ not the treacherous voices he and Blue manage to subdue to quiet whispers in his mind. “Focus, don’t let your attention go lax!”

 _Not my fault!_ He wants to shout, but he doesn’t, because it is his fault. It’s always his fault.

Blue curls a little tighter around him, purring soothingly at him as she flat-out rejects that thought. He manages to summon a confident smile, praying no one sees how shaky it is on the edges. “Righto, leader! Sorry about that.”

Allura calls for an end to the sequence, and the two gladiators and drones sink through temporarily opened holes in the ground before they close up and leave only smooth white floor behind. Lance stares at it for a second, genuinely wondering where exactly those gladiators end up for them to keep coming back up looking perfectly brand-spanking-new, before he shakes his head and forces himself to pay attention to Allura’s instructions for the next set of drills she has planned for them.

“Hey buddy,” Hunk lightly nudges Lance’s shoulder with his own, a concerned look in his eye. “You doing okay?”

Lance shoots him a bright thumbs-up, with an even brighter smile to pair. “Sure thing, my man. Just shakin’ off some sleepies, is all.”

**_:stupid_ ** **and _a liar how pathetic:_**

He hides his internal wince in favour of the look of relief spreading over Hunk’s face. “Oh, okay, that’s good. You’ll tell me if something’s wrong, right? Like, you got breakfast, right? I left some food goo bars I made this morning, I told Pidge to tell you about them.”

Lance nods, patting Hunk’s shoulder comfortingly. “Don’t you worry yourself over little old me, Hunkahunk. I’m cool, and yes, I ate the food goo bars. Only marginally better than gloopy food goo.”

“Gloopy food goo,” Hunk repeats, grinning at the sound of the words.

Lance returns the smile instinctively. How can you not, when it’s Hunk the big teddy bear smiling at you like that?

“Gloopy food goo.” He agrees.

They turn back to pay attention when Allura and Shiro call their names at the same time –it’s a running bet between the three youngest Paladins over when those two will just get on with it and get together already (Pidge is the lead, because Pidge is Pidge). As he listens, he reassures Blue that he’s okay now, that he can handle the voices well enough on his own now.

 _I’m okay, niña,_ he murmurs gently. _Really. Thanks for that, but you don’t need to worry._

He feels a light jab of cold air, the mental equivalent of her poking him with a claw. He resists the urge to roll his eyes.

 _Come on, don’t be like that. I’ve managed eighteen years on my own._ Technically not on his own, considering Allie’s always been there to balance him out, but still.

A faint image of cloudy colours, flame red, sunlight yellow, ivy green, and deep indigo, pushed to the forefront of his mind by Blue’s careful nudging, followed by a phantom sense of relief.

He mentally shakes his head. _No, Blue. I can’t tell them. You know that._

A cat, ears flat against her head, pouting.

He sighs. _I wish I could, but I…can’t._ He wishes things were different, but they’re not. Even the Blue Lion, leg of Voltron, can’t change that.

After quite a bit more convincing, she eases away so he can focus on training, but still leaves a sliver of her consciousness lingering so she can help him at a moment’s notice. Ever since he’d found Blue and come to space to fight this intergalactic war he seriously never would have pictured himself involved in, it’s been a tad bit easier to deal with the voices, even when they try to disguise themselves as his teammates’ voices.

They’re there, they’re always there, and he knows they’ll never go away, he’s accepted that, but with Blue’s reassuring presence in his mind, helping him combat the voice’s screams and cries and taunts and jibes, it’s been easier. Not better, better would be if the voices just _shut up_ and stayed down, never to rise again, but it’s not so bad as it used to be back home, where he could spend days – _actual days_ –incapacitated in bed from the blinding migraines he got from fighting the voices off.

Not to mention the disgusting herbs Mami would get Allie to feed him to deal with when the depression and anxiety that were left over after the voices died down for a while before they sprung back up.

He’s glad Blue’s there to help him. It’s thanks to her he hasn’t had one of his episodes in close to a whole year in space, the longest he’s ever gone without one. Before, the longest he’d ever managed was two months. Honestly, he’s scared to even think about what will happen if he has one here, in front of his friends. Not only is he scared of how they’ll react, how they’ll look at him, but he’s scared of what he could do to them without knowing it.

Lance knows what the voices sounds like. He knows enough to recognize them. He knows when it’s them, and when they’re pretending to be someone else, something they do every once in a while, as if testing his defenses. Blue helps, but it’s different here.

It’s like all this endless vastness of space makes them stronger, harder to ignore, easier for them to hide for long enough to make Lance think they’re gone before they pop up out of nowhere like Jumpin’ Jacks to scare the everliving shit out of him. Just like this morning.

So he is immensely grateful for Blue’s help, but he wishes she would stop trying to get him to tell his team about the voices. What happens if he does, and they don’t think he’s mentally capable to be a part of Voltron? What if he tells them and they decide he’s not worth the effort, that they should just leave him on some alien planet and be rid of him and his incompetence and inability to get anything done right, and –

He flinches when Blue sends him what is tantamount to a harsh smack across the face –claws out. He resists the urge to physically cradle his head in his hands when she growls at him, trying to chase away the negative thoughts that are a product of his own voice, not _them._

 _Sorry,_ he thinks. _Sorry, beautiful. But you now it’s true._

He tunes her out after that, forcing his attention back to training. He notices Keith glancing over at him sometimes as Allura and Coran alternate between describing the rest of the _nasty_ training schedule, but he doesn’t have time to wonder at that, or maybe even call Keith out on that just to watch that impressive blush rise over the Red Paladin’s face, before Allura’s calling the gladiator back to life for hand-to-hand combat.

The invisible maze isn’t on the agenda, thankfully, but Lance has to wonder if he actually owes Pidge some big-time grovelling for that, or if Allura’s just feeling merciful today. For the sake of his dignity, he decides to go with the latter.

But then Allura decides to add a little something to the mix. Fight the gladiator, sure, but also dodge and sidestep the  large hexagonal pieces of floor that fall away and close up again at random intervals without falling down one of them.

_Fuck._

He’d like to say that the rest of training goes without any more incidents. He really would. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t be the truth, and he’d be lying, and the last thing Lance ever wants to associate himself with is open lies. But at least this time it’s only him who suffers the consequences. At least this time, he’s the only one getting hurt, instead of another close call like with Pidge, then Keith.

They take turns with the gladiator and the treacherous floor holes. First Pidge, then Hunk, then Keith, Shiro, and finally, Lance. Funnily enough, that’s the order in which they last, Shiro, of course, going longer than the rest. Lance is only at the end because it doesn’t end well for him.

He’s great at long-range fighting, but close quarters combat is…another thing entirely. He’s had training with it before, training he tries to pretend he hasn’t had so that the rest of the team don’t figure it out, which has made him a little lax from lack of practice, but he still very much prefers to avoid close quarters combat when he can.

Lance tries to keep some distance between him and the gladiator so he can keep using his bayard –now his trusty rifle –to shoot at the gladiator’s weak spots when he manages to circle around the bot just enough to actually get an eye on said weak spots, whilst keeping close watch on the floor at the same time. He lets the power within him wiggle out of its bonds just enough so that he can blanket the floor with it, sensing when a hole’s about to open up seconds before it does so he knows to avoid that spot.

It’s not easy, at all. Easy would be if he used either the rifle or his power, not both at the same time. He knows its good practice to use both, but that doesn’t make it any easier when he’s running around and dodging the gladiator’s wide-swinging arcs with its staff. Half his attention is focused on maintaining the sensor blanket on the floor, keeping it invisible so that the team doesn’t notice it. The other half tells him to watch out for the little twitch of the gladiator’s foot –

He ducks just as the gladiator lashes out with that foot, leg swinging over his head. He leaps back up as the gladiator’s in its rotation, a move he knows will last only two seconds, tops, before its back in defence and attacking him again. He uses that momentary weakness to heft his rifle, lining up his sight down its blue-white length, aiming for the gladiator’s knee joint to incapacitate it long enough for –

**_:you should have been the one to die that day:_ **

His muscles lock at the barely restrained fury in those words that strike him in his heart like a spear tipped in molten rock lancing through his chest. Blue’s growl is muted by that _anger,_ that rage that consumes him until he forgets himself, until he can’t feel his body anymore.

**_:we shouldn’t be stuck here it should be you he should have killed you let us out let us out LET US OUT:_ **

Red washes over his vision, so deep and so complete that it drowns everything else out. He can’t hear beyond the voice’s chanting for release from their prison of his mind. He can’t see beyond the red so deep it’s almost black, like oil on fire that sears him at its touch. He can’t feel anything except rage, hatred, blame, guilt. It all burns in his chest, setting him on fire as lava flows through his veins.

And then Blue roars.

Her roar is a mother’s warning against those who would harm her cub, a threat to that which seeks to strike him down from the inside out. The sound of it vibrates through him, chases after the fire in his veins and leaves behind trails of ice, cool and comforting, dampening the rage burning in him. Her roar fades into a low, dangerous growl, directed at the voices as they silence themselves.

He can almost feel their fear of this strange, deadly and cold entity they still can’t fight back against in the year since he found Blue, since she found him. She wraps herself around Lance from head to toe, shielding him from their words of knives that cut deep into him. His knees shake with the relief that floods him at her comfort, her protection.

He hears someone shouting, he’s not entirely sure who. He slams back into himself when he remembers that he’s in the middle of training against an Altean AI gladiator, eyes snapping open as his hands spasm in surprise around his rifle.

The only hint he gets of the gladiator’s staff swinging for his head is a brief flurry of white-gold movement in the corner of his right eye. He registers it, shoves the whispering voices back door of hell they leaped from as he leaves it to Blue to keep the door locked, and just manages to duck before the staff can whack him upside the head.

As it is, he doesn’t move fast enough to completely avoid it. The staff hits his shoulder, the end of it still managing to clip his head hard enough that when his rattled brain settles, he registers that there’s probably going to be a nasty bruise there. The gladiator swings the staff hard enough that he can _feel_ the heavy weight hitting his _bone_ through his armour, and a strangled cry of pain breaks out of him before he can stop himself.

He hears the teams’ shouts of concern, but he ignores it as a burst of anger –from him? Or the voice? He doesn’t know, oh _shit,_ he doesn’t _know_ who’s angry –fuels him to grip his rifle hard enough in his hands that his knuckles go white with strain.

He swings the rifle around and locks on the gladiator in a split second, pressing the trigger twice and watching with fierce satisfaction as one beam blows through the gladiator’s plated chest armour while the second burns a hole through the middle of its forehead. The gladiator powers down, blue lights dimming as it drops like a mannequin abandoned by its ventriloquist, and sinks into the floor.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears someone call for an end to the training sequence. Maybe Allura, or Shiro. Lance shakily keeps his rifle up, waiting another gladiator to pop up, another demon to melt out of the shadows and pin him to a wall, another set of teeth snapping at his exposed throat –

“Lance!”

He blinks the vision of too-sharp teeth and dark shadows away. He hears Blue purring in his mind, trying to comfort him in what way she can. Confused at the sound of someone calling his name, turns around and only just barely manages to catch the looks of confused worry on Shiro, Pidge, and Keith’s face in varying degrees (why’s Keith looking so worried?) before Hunk is all over him with an, “Oh my god, Lance are you okay? That hit could’ve taken your head off, it was so hard!” Hunk peers up at the observation deck, where, from the corner of his eye, Lance can see Allura and Coran leaning over. “Wasn’t that set a bit too high?”

Lance blinks stupidly at Hunk for a moment before he remembers. No, he’s not at home. No, he’s not on Earth at all, where things that stalk the night hunt him for something he can’t give them without dying. He’s in the Castle, fighting an intergalactic war against a big purple furry. He’s surrounded by his teammates, his friends, who are in a loose circle around him, waiting for him to say something. Shiro is looking at him strangely, as if he’s confused by why he’s faced with something familiar.

 _No estoy allí, no estoy allí,_ he thinks as he summons an easy smile to his face. _Estoy aquí, estoy aquí._

“Nah, nah, I’m fine, Hunk,” Lance waves away the worry with a hand, ignoring the pounding that’s already started up in his temple, and the heavy ache in his shoulder. “It’s not like the Galra will go any easier, right?”

“What happened back there, Lance?” Shiro asks, watching him closely. “You were doing so well, and then you just froze. Is everything all right?”

Lance nods rapidly, maybe too much, because that sets his headache off. “Yeah, I’m fine, just –uh, didn’t get enough sleep last night, is all.” He grins and sends Shiro his trademark finger guns, and if it’s a little shaky, well, hopefully no one notices. “You know me; I need my eight-hour beauty sleep to be in tip-top shape.”

Shiro smiles amusedly at that, although there’s still a hint of uncertainty in his eye, as if he’s taking Lance’s assurances with a grain of salt. He reaches over and claps Lance on the shoulder, the free one since Hunk sticks securely by his side, arm wrapped around the other shoulder and looking ready to physically throw someone if they try to do anything to Lance.

“So long as you don’t push yourself, and get enough of rest.” He looks back at the team before nodding up to the Princess and Coran. “I think that’s enough training for today. We can all go freshen up and rest a little before we get to Xyphelia, all right?”

Everyone wholeheartedly agrees, Keith a little quieter than the rest, but then that’s usually the case with Keith. Lance has noticed that Keith’s almost terrifyingly good with observing people (not at Pidge’s level, which is godlike, but close enough). He hopes Keith hasn’t notice anything about Lance, and he hopes that even if he did, he won’t call Lance out on it in front of everyone.

His prayers must be answered, because Keith keeps silent as Shiro turns back to Hunk and asks him to get Lance to the med-bay and check on his shoulder and head. Lance tries to protest, he’s fine, it was just a little scrape.

Pidge, the little demented gremlin, almost sends him to his knees when she reaches up and pulls Lance down to her height, pressing on the exact spot the gladiator’s staff hit. Shiro chides her for it, though she doesn’t look apologetic one bit for calling Lance out on his bullshit. At Shiro’s stern look, Lance relents and shuffles over to Hunk’s side as they walk to the med-bay.

He idly listens to Hunk’s excited chatter about Xyphelia, wondering what kind of plants and herbs they have and if he’ll be able to use something to whip up a meal better than ‘gloopy food goo’. Lance throws in his two cents every once in a while, but for the most part, he keeps quiet and focuses on fortifying the lock on the door he shuts the voices behind. Even though he knows it won’t hold them back forever, or for that long, it’ll give him some piece of mind for a while. Blue helps by blowing frosty ice over his mental door, hardening his defences.

By the time he’s done with all that, Coran’s already come into the med-bay and checked Lance’s shoulder to make sure it’s not dislocated or too badly bruised, then checking that he doesn’t have a concussion from the hit to his head. Hunk leaves when Coran comes, so he can fix up the Paladins’ lunch before they reach Xyphelia. Lance listens to Coran’s chattering about literally anything, from what it feels like to have something called a tarmogalyte bite your arm, to the grand plans his grandfather had and how he had to haggle with the Castle builders to implement them.

Coran sends Lance off to the showers after giving him an Altean painkiller for his blossoming headache that cuts it off almost instantly. Lance heads to his room first to get a clean change of clothes and his jacket before backpedalling to the communal showers, almost bouncing in his eagerness to stand under the hot water. Maybe he’ll let loose and play with the water using his power. That’ll be cool –he’s always loved doing that, he can just remember the pranks he used to play on his siblings with water.

His plans are derailed, however, when he gets to the shower room to find he won’t be alone there. Keith is there, dressed in only his black flight suit except for the red-streaked shin guards he’s in the process of unstrapping. Lance takes one look at the patch of sweat soaked through the back of his flight suit as he bends to remove the shin guards, and the little droplet sliding down the side of Keith’s forehead, and says, “You trained extra again, didn’t you.”

Something in his voice must sound accusatory or something, because Keith immediately stiffens and straightens, arms crossed in defence. Or maybe that’s just his go-to reaction. “It’s not illegal to.”

“Working yourself to the ground should be, yeah.” Lance answers as he sets his clothes down in the rack in his chosen shower stall and begins the lengthy, annoying process of removing his armour. Lance might have been the only one to get injured today, but he knows for a fact that Keith pushed himself harder today against the gladiators.

(Don’t ask him how he knows. He’ll deny everything.)

Lance may not train as often as Keith and Shiro do, but he knows about it, knows what physically overexerting yourself can do. He also knows Keith won’t listen to him, might even go straight back to the training deck if Lance winds him up enough, so Lance chooses not to comment on Keith’s silence as he quickly gets through his armour.

He cautiously sets his pendant underneath the folded hood of his jacket so that Keith won’t see it. He’s been careful to keep the fact that he wears the pendant day-in day-out from the team so that they don’t ask questions about it, because honestly, the design is out-there enough that they might. Pidge certainly will. He could always just say that it’s something to remind him of home, but that’s half a lie, and he doesn’t like lying.

Keith’s already in the shower, the water drowning out most opportunity for conversation, steam rising all around. Lance shakes his head wryly and wonders if it’s a Red Paladin thing to bathe under impossibly hot water. He gets into his own stall and starts the water up at a humanly bearable temperature, idly wondering if he has enough time to wash his hair, then going right ahead since he figures he deserves it. As he does, he feels a tingle on the back of his neck a few times, but makes no comment on it.

But Lance decides to speak up when he feels eyes on him for longer than a minute which, he thinks, is long enough to breach politeness. “I know I’m attractive, niño bonito, but give a man some privacy in the shower, why don’t you?”

Lance doesn’t need to turn around to know Keith’s flushing red right to his ears, only chuckling at the awkward cough he hears from the stall next to him.

“I –I wasn’t –”

Lance turns his head round just enough to give Keith an unimpressed look, one brow lifted. Keith’s shoulders slump as he turns around and huffs his way through aggressively slathering bubbly soap over his shoulders and –

Yeah, Lance turns away at that. He isn’t the only pretty thing in the showers right now. Plus, Keith’s hair should be _illegal._ It looks way too nice, all slicked back over his forehead and sticking to the back of his neck, so dark and just long enough that Lance wonders what it would feel like if he –

_LaNcE sToP wItH tHeM gAy ThOuGhTs BoI nO_

He quickly spins round to focus on his own shower, maybe scrubbing at his hair a little harder than necessary, but if it keeps his attention where it should be, he’s not going to complain (much).

Lance is under no illusions. He knows he’s a straight-up bi (heh). He knows he likes boys just as much as he likes girls. He knows he loves flirting with both and maybe getting together with one or the other. It’s not like he hasn’t before. So he knows, after a year of being two of seven people on the Castle, that he finds Keith attractive. Honestly, how can he not? You’d have to be blind not to.

But he refuses, adamantly refuses, to let the attraction go anywhere else. Teasing Keith is fun, and so is their ‘rivalry’ (which is more of them just competing against each other, and, honestly, Lance doesn’t know when they passed the Point Of No Return To Rivalry, but he doesn’t think he’d want to return to that needless jealousy and envy. He likes what they have now. It’s easy, it’s fun), but Lance doesn’t want to let it go further than that.

Maybe later, maybe if he had an inkling as to Keith’s feelings towards him, but right now he has too much on his plate. His powers are acting up and have him floating over his bed, the voices are getting smarter, learning new tricks to catch him off-guard and make him trip, confusing him all the time about his place on the team, and they’re all fighting a damn war against a 10,000-year-old purple Hitler.

It’s too much.

Besides. Who’d want to deal with the fucked up shit he lugs around as baggage? Who’d want to be with someone who hears voices in their heads, who fakes confidence like it’s the easiest thing in the world to cover up the desperate homesickness carving holes in his heart, who has insecurities swirling around so deep inside them that they may never leave? No one, that’s who. He’s too much effort.

He’s just rinsing his hair of the shampoo (he has _got_ to find out where Alteans get their shampoo) before Keith speaks up again.

“You have a tattoo?”

Lance blinks the suds out of his eyes, and moves just enough out of the showerhead’s jet streams so that he can hear over the rush of water. The shower room is arranged in seven cubicles that are big but not very, and separated from each other by walled partitions so that the only thing you really see much of whoever’s in the next cubicle beyond their head, maybe a bit of neck in Lance’s quite-tall case. He cannot count the number of times he’s been hit with a spike of envy whenever he caught a glimpse of Shiro’s muscular shoulders.

He glances at Keith in confusion, trying very hard not to openly stare at the way droplets of water cling to Keith’s unfairly long eyelashes like crystals, and struggling not to let himself be flustered at the water running rivulets down Keith’s neck from hair long enough to almost brush those firm shoulders.

Ugh, he shouldn’t be getting flustered in the first place. This is still Keith, the Mullet with capital M. Sure, he’s got a pretty face, and Lance could get trapped in those eyes that never seem quite sure whether to be deep violet, or fathomless black, or smoky grey, or –

_HoLy ShIt StOp_

“Um. What?” he asks dumbly.

Keith points at Lance’s neck and, in a rush of understanding, Lance finally realizes what he’s talking about. Right on the top knob of his spine on the back of his neck is a tattoo –it’s a pretty simple design, considering Lance’s personality. If Lance had had a say in it, he’d have gotten a giant masterpiece tattooed on his back, maybe of precious, lovely Blue surrounded by nebulae and spinning stars, or something equally as beautiful and extravagant. Instead, what he has is his family’s sigil tattooed on the back of his neck.

Branded into his skin in black ink, it is a tilted square to look like a diamond, with ovals at the top of each corner, overlapped with a single curving line that connects the circles to each other without the circles actually touching, and the lines remaining solitary from one another. He knows there’s some deeper meaning behind the sigil, but he fell asleep during the Symbology class his parents forced him and Allie to attend.

(What? Symbols are boring when they’re not interesting, which is a good ninety-eight percent of the time.)

For a split second of insanity, Lance wonders how Keith would react if he said, _I’ve had this since I was seven, Allie’s got the same one too._ He wonders what Keith would say if he added, _Everyone who’s like me has some tattoo like this on their person._

 _Who’s Allie?_ He’d probably ask. _Family?_

 _You have no idea,_ he’d probably answer.

 _‘Like me’?_ He’d probably ask. _What do you mean ‘like me’?_

As soon as the thought to explain what ‘like me’ means passes through Lance’s head, he’d probably be incapacitated in mind-numbing pain to keep him from speaking another word, for quiznack knew how long.

Yep. Nope. He’s not going there.

“Oh, this old thing,” he laughs nervously, unconsciously reaching a hand up to rub at it. He can’t see it, he’s only ever seen it vaguely through mirrors and more clearly from pictures taken of it, but he feels he can trace the simple design easily enough. He does that, once, before dropping his hand and lazily grinning at Keith. “Why, you interested in getting one?”

Is it just him, or are the tips of Keith’s ears getting really very red?

“No,” Keith answers, scowling for no reason, as usual. “I just –I’ve never seen it before.”

“Seen a tattoo before?”

“Seen a tattoo on _you,_ before.”

“Oh?” he gives Keith a racy smirk. “And you’ve been looking enough to know?”

Keith’s mouth flaps like an electrocuted fish (how is even _that_ cute, the hell?) for a good five seconds before he shakes his head and turns away again to his shower. “You are unbelievable.”

“That’s what she said.”

Lance laughs at the choked spluttering, simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief at deflecting Keith’s attention from the tattoo. He could have come up with some passably believable bullshit excuse about it, maybe even spun some whimsical backstory to it to twist its existence on Lance’s neck into true Lance Fashion, but he really doesn’t feel like doing so.

He aches in places he regularly forgets he has after the near-brutal training session (‘fairly simple’ his _ass_ ), his heart still weighs heavy and sore whenever his mind strays too close to memories he doesn’t want to think about, and to top it off, he still has to actively keep a manacled leash on his powers that swirl and curl restlessly inside him, begging for release.

Really. He has his hands full as it is. Deflecting’s just the easier route. Telling the truth is certainly not on the map, because the pain of getting the tattoo in the first place will be _nothing_ compared to what comes if he opens his big mouth and so much as breathes a word of what he can do, what he is, who he is.

“Hey, Lance,” Keith speaks up again. “Are you okay?”

“Hm.” Maybe deflecting’s not working so well with Keith. “Why’s everyone asking me that today?”

“Maybe because you don’t look okay?”

Lance gasps, whirling around and putting a hand to his chest, greatly offended. “Ex _cuse,_ I always look fine!”

Is it just him or did Keith’s eyes drift to where his hand rests on his chest before meeting Lance’s eye? Keith’s eyes lock onto his too quick for Lance to tell, and he can’t help squirming on the inside at the intensity of those violet stars. “You have bags under your eyes.”

Lance’s mouth drops. “You take that back.”

Keith frowns. “Why would I take it back if it’s true?”

“Because you are questioning the integrity of my beauty regimen, which is _perfect,_ thank you very much.”

“It’s not my fault your ‘beauty regimen’ isn’t working.”

“It does work!”

Keith’s lips curl up. “Really? I don’t see it.”

“Then you, my mullet man, are blind.” He huffs like a sulky child throwing a temper tantrum and spins around, very aware his tattoo is much more exposed to Keith’s scrutiny like this, but not caring all that much once a thought strikes him. “Maybe you’d finally realize the true wonders of having beautiful skin if you’d let me treat you to a session.”

“I don’t want alien mud on my face.”

“It’s not all mud, Keithy boy.”

“Or alien goo.”

“Oh, so you’re willing to eat green alien goo, which gets _digested,_ but not a face mask that you can wash off?”

“Isn’t the point of the face mask that your skin absorbs it?” Keith asks. Lance looks over to see Keith with a genuinely confused expression, as if he’s struggling to understand that fundamentals of physics and not the basics of a skincare routine. “How’s that different to eating it?”

“I –”

Actually, he has no answer for that. Quiznack.

Before he can scrounge up some response and bicker some more, Allura’s voice sounds over the speakers –and yes, he understands the logic behind having those speakers in every part of the Castle, including the showers, but it is still weird as hell to hear her while he’s there.

“Paladins, please make your way to the bridge once you’re done freshening up after training. We are three vargas to reaching Xyphelia, and I’d like to brief you all on what’s to be expected before we arrive.”

Allura cuts out after that, and Lance turns to Keith, who’s watching him. He aims one soapy finger at Keith and says, sotto voce, “This debate ain’t over yet, mullet.”

A faint uptick of Keith’s lips is all the answer Lance gets before they return to their respective showers. Lance tries very hard not to picture what Keith looks like when he’s got a genuine, full-blown grin on his face.

↭§↭

Once everyone gathers on the bridge after the intensive hell-training, Allura gets straight to the point in typical Allura fashion. Typical Allura fashion sometimes includes her staff, wielded with deadly expertise, so this time Lance tries harder to pay attention.

“I thought it would be a good idea to rehash our discussion from last night about the Xyphelians,” is it just him, or is Allura looking at him when she says that? “As well as to go over their customs, to avoid any mishaps along the way. We will be on the planet for the talks, with accommodation provided by the Xyphelian ruler, King Lykonark, in their palace. We must _all_ be on our best behaviour for the duration of our stay.”

This time, she gives each Paladin a stern glare in warning –except Shiro, because Shiro’s perfect, why would he need a stern glare. When no one disagrees with Allura, she nods and gestures for Coran to step forward.

“Righto,” Coran starts, twirling his bright orange moustache and clicking his heels smartly, as if he’s a professor about to delve into the lecture of his life. Which is basically just ordinary Coran being ordinary, overzealous Coran Coran the Gorgeous Man. “Let’s get to it, then, shall we?”

He picks up his tablet from the table and swipes his finger across the screen to awake it. He taps it for a few seconds before he swipes his hand across it and up in front of him, bringing up a 3D hologram depicting a swirling star system that looks astonishingly similar to the solar system Earth belongs to, although the galaxy the Xyphelians’ star system is a part of looks to be in a clear circular rotation.

Coran brings up both hands and zooms the star system further, until they’re looking at a planet that would pretty much be Earth, if Earth’s landmasses were a dusty red, and if the seas were a strange green hue. Or maybe he’s seeing it wrong, and it’s the seas that are red, and the landmasses that are that funny green.

“The Xyphelians are Alteanoid in appearance, like us with you Humans, although not without their distinct differences, of course. They were allies of Altea for –golly, hundreds of years, I’d say. I think they first became allied with Altea when my grandfather was still a youth, long before I was even born! In fact –”

Allura ‘ahems’ quietly from where she stands beside him, and he nods once. “Sorry, back to business. The Xyphelians themselves, well, they’re an amicable species, very wise and knowing, not easy to anger them. They live exceptionally long lives, even in comparison to Alteans. Their planet is simply chock-full of resources coveted by many others who they trade with –and, unfortunately, the Galra as well.

“The Xyphelians have managed to fend of Zarkon’s armies for a long time, but they’re reaching a breaking point. That, dear Paladins, is why we’re going to Xyphelia. To secure an alliance with one of old Altea’s closest friends, whose addition to the Coalition will bring a sizeable increase to our forces, as well as unimpeded access to the resources on the planet, and to gather what intel the Xyphelians may have on Galran army movements that could help number five with finding her family.” He finishes, nodding at Pidge, who continues tapping out notes on everything Coran’s said at a rapid-fire pace, fingers moving so fast they blur.

Coran has a fond smile barely visible behind the whiskers of his moustache as he watches her type up his words. He taps something on his tablet and the holographic star system disappears, replaced with a viewing screen that floats next to him as he stands before the Paladins seated on the couches. The screen flickers for a moment before a picture of an alien comes up, with Altean writing on the side.

The alien looks something like Nyma, with twin appendages on its head for hair, and skin that is a pale blue, so translucent that Lance can almost see veins webbing out underneath the skin’s surface. Its eyes are diamond-shaped, devoid of eyebrows and without any discernible pupil and so dark it’s like sinking into a black hole if you look to long, and it has a mouth that doesn’t appear to have lips. Lance can’t see if the alien has ears, but he figures it might because the picture is just a full-frontal view of the alien, rather than a 3-D representation of it.

“The Xyphelians are remarkable warriors, despite leaning more towards being a peaceable species. They fight in tandem with each other, always paired together with their mates or, if they are not mated yet, with their chosen partners until otherwise. Something to note about the Xyphelians is that they have the ability to sense each other’s emotions, and to top it off, their camaraderie is fantastic thanks to the fact that they have no secrets between themselves, thereby eliminating the possibility of dissent amongst their ranks thanks to those secrets.”

Allura nods gratefully at Coran as she steps forward and begins listing out the do’s-and-don’t’s while they’re on Xyphelia, but Lance has already zoned out by then. Hunk will be there, so Lance knows if he’s actually about to do something disastrous –like shake hands when he’s not supposed to –Hunk will stop him.

And if Hunk’s not around, Pidge is (except, he hopes she won’t stop him by tasing him with her bayard. Seriously, it’s not fun). And if not Pidge, then Keith’s scowl will be enough to warn him.

If Lance had been paying attention, he probably could have avoided the whole tangled mess that followed once they landed on Xyphelia. Or at least, he’d have done a better job than the one he ended up doing anyways.

If he’d been listening.

He didn’t.

↭§↭

One hour before the reach Xyphelia, Lance makes his way to the holo-deck and pulls up a holographic projection of the entire charted universe. He idly scrolls through the images of the planets they’ve liberated from Galra control. Blue dots denote their freed status, other planets they’ve convinced to join the Coalition and allied with are orange dots, and more planets that are still stuck under Galra rule alternate between red and purple dots.

There are a lot of red and purple dots.

After a few minutes of this, he quickly inputs coordinates he’s memorized after asking Coran about them, and watches as the holographic universe zips through planets, stars, solar systems, entire galaxies spinning by so fast that they’re mere specks of brilliant light and colour that flash by his eyes. A few moments later, Lance watches the hologram come to a slow stop.

A slowly spinning globe hovers in the air above Lance as he sinks to the ground, crossing his legs and staring up at it. It’s a deep, oceanic blue interspersed with lingering white trails, under which lay huge landmasses that range from deep brown to forest green. In most parts, there are golden-brown lights scattered over the lands, strung together to look like the many chains of a beautiful golden necklace.

A broken smile paints his face as he lets the hollow ache in his chest grow. He reaches up, yearning filling his heart as his hand passes through the hologram. “Casa, te extraño, te extraño muchísimo.”

And as Lance watches the Earth rotate, his home planet oblivious to the sorrow he buries deep in his heart in the way all planets are, he brings his knees up to his chest, wraps his arms around his legs, and cries, pained whispers of, _Casa, casa,_ falling from his trembling lips.

↭§↭

Space elves.

Quiznacking _space elves._

There’s simply no other way to describe the Xyphelians and how they live –especially _what_ they live in. Think alien Thranduil, and you’ve got it right. Think Lady Galadriel and her huge-ass tree with precious stones for lights and glittering water _but in space_ , and you’ve got it right.

He’d thought they’d be some weirdly-looking alien types, and while the Xyphelians don’t have hair, instead having two long appendages that reach the middle of their back, come in colours anywhere between red and blue, and their blinking has some kind of white film opening and closing sideways instead of up and down like their outer eyelids, they’re pretty much how he’d expect space elves to be.

From what he sees of the many Xyphelians that come to the landed Castle-Ship to greet them, they’re all dressed in similar clothes, garments that look like they’re made from giant leafs of varying designs and materials. Some of the clothes actually look like they’re made out of flexible, wearable metal, which has Pidge staring in longing to get her hands on the material to test out its durability and whatnot (she’s held back by a restraining parenting hand from Shiro, luckily for the space elves). He has no idea if the space elves have gender, though –they all have flat chests under their more-than-revealing clothes, but some of them do look a little more feminine than the others. Somehow.

After all the planets they’ve been to and aliens they’ve seen, Lance was honestly expecting something a little more…alien-y. Like, besides the pseudo-hair and the colours and the pupil-less eyes, the Xyphelians could be humans –or more accurately, Alteans, since they have the same pointy ears, if a little longer than Allura’s and Coran’s.

(Yes, he’s still sensitive about his ears after Allura nearly yanked them off in their first meeting, though you’ll never hear him say it.)

The Xyphelian palace, where King Lykonark lives and rules his people, is actually the largest tree Lance has ever set eyes on. He’s not even entirely sure it’s a single tree, but more like several all grouped so close that their pale pink trunks have merged together, fluttering blue leaves growing into one another so that the branches grow tall and as one huge canopy of leaves that must cover several hundred acres. He can even see stairs delicately carved into the trees, winding up, all the way to the top.

The longer he stares, the more he comes to realize that there are actual houses carved in the tree, with Xyphelians flitting to and from them as they go about their business. For a while, all the Paladins can do is stare in awe at the tree-palace. Pidge wonders aloud how the tree can be so big when it’s so close to the ocean.

At least he was right about the colours of the planet. The sea he spies the shore of from where they land a little further inland is indeed a broiling mass of pink waves that crash along the massive rocks and system of clearly visible caves dotting the shoreline, while the land they walk on is emerald green. It’s feels like moss, and every step has a little patch lightening around his foot.

Lance dances around a little bit, enchanted at how pretty it all looks, and he even gets Pidge and Hunk to tap-dance a little. The homesickness plaguing him lifts a little when Pidge laughs wholeheartedly at the foolish dance moves he makes as he circles around her, even humouring him a little with a few of her own moves. He attempts to rope Keith into it, but the mullet seems perfectly content to watch rather than participate. They have to stop when the Xyphelian king’s retinue reaches them, all with neutral faces. Maintain professionalism and all that.

For all of five seconds as they boarded the hovercrafts the king’s cortège came in and head to the tree-palace, he’d wondered if they’d get a chance to swim in the ocean, marvelling at the way the planet’s midday sun has the pink water glittering like crystals lay just beneath the surface. That was before he saw a large crocodilian-whale hybrid creature leap out of the water, flip over twice, before plunging back under the waves. He’s pretty sure there was something _alive_ in sharp teeth easily twice his height.

Yeah, no.

The air is breathable, so the Paladins remove the visors of their helmets to more clearly take in the planet without the screen in the way. Lance, surprisingly (for everyone involved who knows better), isn’t in a flirtatious mood at all. He’s quiet as he looks around at the planet while they’re escorted to the towering tree-palace ahead.  The sight of the tree-palace, how perfectly elven it looks, how much it reminds him of _home,_ has something in his gut souring his good mood until there’s absolutely nothing left of it.

His mind rotates like a carousel, conjuring up memories of all the times he and Allie used to spend flicking through pictures of elves, all the times he’d pretend to be the heroic knight saving his younger siblings from the crafty elf Allie was playing, or when he’d be the ugly ogre and Allie the beautiful pixie saving them instead, before his brain decides to rudely remind him with the fact that he’s turning nineteen, he’s been away from home for over a year, and he hasn’t been able to contact his family to let them know he’s okay.

To keep himself from letting his dumb brain veer way, _way_ off-course into charted territory he definitely does not want to traverse again, ever, he sidles up to Pidge’s side and raps lightly on the side of her helmet to get her attention.

She looks up at him, vaguely irate at being disturbed from studying some complicated looking scanner she’s projected from her gauntlet that looks like it’s scanning a leaf she picked up. “Yeah?”

He waves his hand vaguely in front of his eyes. “How’s the thing with your helmet’s visor coming along?”

She might not have needed glasses before, but after wearing them so often for more than a year, her eyesight has gotten worse and she now actually needs to wear them. Lance is pretty sure he’s the only one who’s caught on to the fact that she sometimes has trouble seeing things through her helmet’s visor. Luckily enough, because Pidge is a certified genius and anyone can _fight_ him on this, she’s working on fixing up the visor so that it matches her vision and she won’t have to blunder around blindly.

Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You remember about that?”

Lance crosses his arms over his chest and pouts. “Of course I remember! I’m a big brother –it’d be a shame for me to forget about things my little brothers and sister did. Also dangerous, because they’d make me pay for forgetting.” He shrugs, wishing he didn’t bring his family up. “So, yeah, I remember.”

“Oh,” Pidge looks vaguely uncomfortable, like she doesn’t know how she should comfort him. She shakes her head and seems to decide to simply focus on answering his question. “Well, I had to recalibrate several features in the embedded coding, including the zooming to focus on my current eyesight level while not completely dismissing other external factors, and…” she dissolves into a long-winded spiel of techno babble that he only understands parts of.

Lance half pays attention to it, eventually giving up when Hunk joins in and they talk a mile a second. He and Keith share a knowing look at the engineer-scientist duo’s chattering before looking away, smiling to themselves.

Of course, that leaves Lance’s brain to turn traitorous again as he absently reaches up and toys with the string of his pendant under his armour’s collar. He swallows thickly and drops his hand, wishing he could think about something else.

It’s like a stone settles in the black hole of his stomach, dampening his mood as he quietly follows Allura and the rest of the Paladins out of the hovercraft and inside the tree-palace. He barely takes notice of what diplomatic niceties Allura and Shiro exchange with their Xyphelian entourage, or of the tree-palace itself as they’re led to the ceremonial chambers in which they’ll meet the king.

As they walk, the crowd of Xyphelians that had been at the landed Castle quickly grows larger as they approach the tree-palace. Now that they’re steadily weaving through the arched road-walkways of the tree, Allura encourages them to wave at the Xyphelians as they pass the gathered groups of space elves who flit out of their houses to get a look at the famed Paladins of Voltron, whom their king is to secure an alliance with.

Every once in a while, he’ll catch a Xyphelian or two who seem to be looking right at him, with such intensity that a wave of discomfort has goosebumps rising over his skin under his armour. He wonders what that’s about. In fact, now that he thinks about it, even the guards themselves glance at the Paladins every once in a while, though he’s not sure if he’s just imagining their dark eyes lingering on him or not.

He tries to catch what they’re saying as they whisper and talk to each other and point and wave at the Paladins with smiles that actually don’t look creepy without any lips, but there’s too much noise for the translator in his helmet to decipher what they say. They’re language sounds vaguely familiar in a way he can’t quite pinpoint. It’s like listening to water in a brook, soft and liquid, flowing from their lips.

Another wave of his intense longing to go home, or at least see it in any other way besides a holographic projection, washes over him as he turns away from trying to hear what the Xyphelians are saying. As he does, he catches Keith’s eye. He’s watching Lance with a strange look. Lance raises a brow in questioning.

Keith shrugs and mouths, _Are you okay?_

Lance blinks in surprise at the question several times before nodding quickly and looking ahead of them so that Keith won’t question the blatant lie for what it is. They have finally reached the entrance of the tree-palace, their sleek hovercrafts coming to a stop in front of a pair of massive double doors wrought in a metal that looks like a mix of gold and silver.

The Paladins follow Allura and the Xyphelian ambassador, Markonyk, past the huge doors guarded by the most astonishingly stern-faced soldiers. Seriously, their faces are so perfectly stoic, they look like they’ve been carved out of stone. Lance follows the other Paladins’ suit and stares up and around at the awning corridors they walk down. He nods greetings to the Xyphelians darting around in the palace as they go about their business, but he doesn’t do much else like he knows he usually would.

When he catches Hunk looking over at him in concern every once in a while, he scrounges up just enough of his mask to put on a bright smile and occasionally flirt with some of the Xyphelians that they pass. Their laughs twinkle at his foolishness, lifting his spirits just a bit. He always likes making people laugh, even if it’s at him.

“Seriously?” Keith mutters when Lance manages to pry a derisive laugh out of one of the guards accompanying them along the way, who looks more amused by Lance’s antics than offended. “You can’t go a day without flirting, can you?”

“Aw, don’t be jelly, Keithy,” Lance waggles his eyebrows suggestively at him. “There’s plenty of me to go around.”

“I’d prefer you stay as far away from me as you can.”

Lance shrugs, no longer offended or hurt by the blunt words as he might have once been, because he can see the little twitch at the corner of Keith’s lips that means he’s fighting off a smile. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, mullet-head.”

Keith pouts –he honest to god _pouts,_ and oh quiznack, Lance shouldn’t find that as cute as he does, oh no –and crosses his arms over his chest. “Your hair’s weirder than mine.”

To cover up the weird twanging his heart’s doing at the sight of Keith’s biceps (the boy’s got muscles, _why_ is he still so slender and lean? Like how? How do can those lean muscles be real? Just??), he gasps. “You dare! I can’t believe you just –I denounce everything you just said.”

Keith rolls his eyes at Lance’s dramatics, but with a sly smirk, he adds, “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Noodle.”

“That’s Pidge’s –!”

“I fully condone Keith’s adoption of your true name,” Pidge cuts in before he can finish.

Lance turns on her. “You traitor!”

Pidge snickers as Hunk pats Lance’s shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry, bud. Soon as we get back to the Castle, I’ll make your favourite cookies.” He looks around at the tree-palace expectantly, as if he’s genuinely expecting some kind of alien flour to jump into his arms so he can coo lovingly at it. “Maybe I can find the cook around here and get some more recipes and ingredients before we head back…”

Lance sniffles. “Hunk, buddy, pal, I love you.”

Hunk pats his shoulder again, smiling indulgently. “Love you too, man.”

“I am going to puke.” Pidge says, Keith mumbling something that sounds like agreement under his breath.

Lance lightly shoves at her arm as he laughs. “Don’t insult the bromance, dude. That’s _sacred.”_

Hunk dutifully nods along. “Yep, the bromance is sacred. Coran’s version of cookies is blasphemy, though.”

Lance, Pidge, and Keith groan at the mention of Coran’s disastrous attempt at baking cookies with the few ingredients that are left on the Castle only a few hours prior. Even under Hunk’s watchful eye, the Altean’s cookies turned out more like burnt crisps of brown-green goo that oozed disgustingly. Even Shiro hadn’t been able to disguise his look of utter revulsion at the first sight of the misshapen cookies. They tasted like burnt grass.

Cookies should never be defiled like that.

“Guys,” Shiro murmurs, quiet enough that they all have to pretty much lean in closer to hear him. “Let’s try to be professional and civil while we’re here, all right? We don’t want the Xyphelians to get the wrong idea about who they’re allying with.”

Lance shoots him an incredulous look. “What, we’re not allowed to talk while we’re here?” Allura and Coran didn’t say anything about that. But then again, he hadn’t really paid much attention (again).

Shiro shrugs. “Maybe keep the flirting to a minimum? You don’t know what may constitute as an insult here, even if it’s in good faith. Better to be safe than sorry. This alliance is important not just to the Princess, but to the Coalition –and us –as well.”

“Hm.” There’s definitely sound logic in that, though none of the Xyphelians he’s talked to so far have looked more than amusedly annoyed at him, which he’s plenty used to. “Guess you have a point there.”

Pidge frowns at him. “Who are you, and what have you done to the Noodle?”

Lance gapes at her. “I am perfectly capable of being mature and acting my age.”

“What is that, nine?”

“Oh my god, Pidge –”

Shiro hushes them quickly then when they make a final turn and come to another set of doors. This one is not quite as large as the entrance doors, but no less extravagantly decorated with the tree’s vines that twist around what he can see are definitely precious stones in various gleaming colours, mostly emerald green, turquoise, amber, and what Lance thinks might be actual amethyst. The largest one is about the size of his hand, set in the centre of the door.

As the team comes to a halt, two guards posted at the door step forward and request to search them for weapons. The Paladins agree, being allowed to keep their bayards, though Keith scowls mightily when one of the guards attempts to take away his luxite blade. Allura swiftly steps in to avoid Keith swinging at the guard to get them to back off. While Shiro puts a restraining hand on Keith’s shoulder, she asks Markonyk if Keith may be allowed to keep the blade. When the ambassador asks why, she diplomatically tells him that the blade is of sentimental value to the Red Paladin.

Markonyk hesitates, staring at the Blade of Marmora symbol etched into the daggers hilt, clearly weighing the pros and cons of letting a blade anywhere near his king versus angering the famously hair-trigger tempered Red Paladin of Voltron. Just when Lance thinks Keith’s about to volunteer to just stay behind rather than parting with the blade, Markonyk nods tersely, displeased (it must take skill, Lance decides, to properly convey displeasure when you have no eyebrows to speak of).

 _One crisis averted,_ Lance thinks sagely, noting how the tension doesn’t ease out of Keith’s wiry body for even a moment as the guards return to their stations and push open the doors. _Next one, coming up._

Really. After a year in space, fighting this war, and after everything he’s been through before even getting to space in the first place, Lance knows better than to expect nothing bad to happen while they’re here.

(It’s not pessimism, it’s realism.)

The hall they step into is simply cavernous _,_ the ceiling extending up so high he’s not entire sure he can actually see it as it is shadowy from the lack of illumination that far up. It’s just as grand as he thought it’d be –more so, perhaps.

The ceiling looks to be supported by equally impossibly tall pillars of the tree, stout and sturdy enough to hold the weight of the room’s ceiling. There are four pillars at the corners of the room, with six more arranged in a perfect, large circle at the centre. The floor, unlike the rest of the tree-palace and the outside city made entirely out of the tree itself, looks like it’s made from some sort of marble, smooth and polished, white streaking through the pale pink that matches so well with the tree’s wood.

Around the room hang elaborate, distinctly alien ornaments of what he assumes is refined taste, and braziers with lowly-raised platforms of white stone rise at the foot of each of the six pillars. On each platform stands a Xyphelian, all practically identical in long, flowing pale blue robes that cover most of their body while still being mostly see-through.

The only differences between them is the miniscule different shades of their skin, though they’re all somewhere between the blue and pink spectrum. Lance wonders what’s the whole deal with the tree-palace (he thinks he remembers Coran calling it the Xyphelians’ World Tree, kind of like the mythical Yggdrasil on Earth) and everything being blue or pink here.

The Xyphelians (council? Is this the king’s council or something? Certainly looks that way) stand unnaturally still. Lance would have thought that they were carved from the tree as well, if they hadn’t all turned their heads to look at the doors when they opened at the exact same time. Creepy.

The tallest pulpit is set at the head, where King Lykonark sits in a throne of stiffened tree roots and vines climbing up along the pillar behind it. His face set in total neutrality, black eyes tracking the progress of his retinue and team Voltron approaching his dais. Lance can’t help thinking the throne looks a little like how he’d imagine the sword throne from Game of Thrones to look like if it were made for an elf to sit on.

While his council(?) are dressed in blue robes that flutter about them in a cool breeze Lance can’t feel through the stuffiness of his armour, the king himself is clad in more solid clothes, wearing beige pants and a matching florally designed tunic under a heavily embroidered robe that looks stiff from how many beads and tiny crystals are sewn into it.

Lance is startled when the king speaks, he was sitting so still he might as well have been a statue. From the way Keith blinks and shifts from foot to foot, Lance figures Keith was thinking along the same lines, too. The Paladins come to a stop about ten feet from the King’s dais, Allura just a little bit ahead of them as she speaks on their behalf.

“Paladins of Voltron,” King Lykonark greets. His voice sounds like gurgling water, not exactly pleasant, but not hard on the ears, either. “I welcome you to my home, on behalf of the council and the Xyphelian people. May the nightstars shine on you, and bless the journey your life embarks upon.”

Allura bows, not deep enough to show subservience, but just enough to show her respect for him as a royal. “May the daystar look upon you kindly, and bless you in the trials to come.” She straightens, looking every bit the royal Princess of Altea, spine straight, chin held high, regal as can be. Even her battle suit looks royal, considering it’s pretty similar to the Paladin’s armour. “I thank you for your welcome of the Paladins of Voltron, King Lykonark. It is an honour to be here.”

“The honour is all mine, Princess Allura.” King Lykonark tips his head in acceptance of her words. “My people anticipate great things in joining the Voltron Coalition and becoming allies with the famed legendary defender, as we are eager to ally ourselves with the last survivor of the old Altean royal line.”

Allura smiles courteously, although her lips are a little tight at the corners. Lance has long since noticed she does that whenever mention of her destroyed home comes from someone. “The Coalition, and the Paladins and I, as well, look forward to allying with Xyphelia. You and your people are admirable to have not have succumbed to the Galran Empire for as long as you have. That is no small feat.”

King Lykonark mimics Allura’s polite smile, and Lance is left to wonder if diplomacy isn’t just spending an absurd amount of time simply cosying up to one another for mutual benefit. “Indeed, Princess.”

Allura nods and steps aside, gesturing with a hand back to the Paladins. “Allow me to introduce to you the Paladins of Voltron.”

One by one, she does just that, starting with Shiro, then Keith, then Lance, Hunk, and finally, Pidge, and which Lions they pilot (as if the colour-coded armour isn’t enough. Maybe Xyphelians are colour blind?).

Lykonark nods at each of them in acknowledgement, even actually extending his regrets to Shiro that he had to suffer a year in Galran captivity before becoming the Black Paladin. Shiro, to his credit, manages quite well under the royal Xyphelians’ attention, thanking him (in a rather tight-lipped manner) before stepping back to stand beside his team.

Everything is going well so far. Markonyk steps up again to introduce the members of the Xyphelian Council to the team, briefly mentioning what their role on the Council is while Lykonark watches on in silence with his expressionless face. With so many names thrown at him, Lance only really remembers one of the council members’ names; Darnyk.

More than once, however, Lance feels Lykonark’s eyes settle on the Paladins for a long few seconds, seemingly on Lance for much longer than the others. However, when Lance glances over to see if the King is actually looking at them, he can’t quite tell if it’s the Paladins he’s watching with those impossibly dark eyes, Allura, or Markonyk going about his ambassador duties of explaining to the Paladins where they’ll be staying for the two-day duration of discussing the alliance and Xyphelia’s entrance into the Coalition. Lance tries to concentrate on what Markonyk’s saying, but it’s ridiculously hard to ignore the wave of goosebumps he feels every time he thinks Lykonark is watching them.

Lance winces when a feather-light whisper of the voices drifts from behind his mental. He ends up completely blocking out everything that happens outside of his head for the next few minutes as he scrambles to throw defences and locks at the door, even asking Blue for help, despite how far away she is. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, better than his crumbling defences alone. He manages to get the voices locked away in relatively good time and refocuses his attention back on where he is, hoping he didn’t miss out on anything important.

Surprisingly quickly, Markonyk announces that the Paladins will now be led back to their quarters to take some time to themselves before meeting with the King again to proceed with whatever it is that needs to be done to get this alliance. They’ll have roughly two varga to inspect their quarters and explore the tree-palace before returning to the council chambers. But before they can turn to leave, Lykonark’s soft voice halts them.

“Princess Allura,” he calls, voice languid.

Allura stiffens imperceptibly, smoothening the surprise from her face before turning back to him. Okay, so clearly they were supposed to just go on ahead to the quarters, first meeting with the Xyphelian King done. What’s wrong that he’s calling them back to his attention now?

“Yes, King Lykonark?” she answers in a genteel tone.

“I do not doubt the capabilities of Voltron, or its Paladins, especially considering the many battles you have already won against the oppressive Galra, and the many worlds that have rallied behind your cause.”

Allura tilts her head in quiet acceptance of his words. Lance doesn’t miss the slight downward tick of her eyebrows to show her confusion as to where Lykonark is going with his words.

“And I am sure you are aware of my people’s abilities, correct?” Lykonark asks.

Allura nods. “You can sense emotions between each other.” She replies simply.

“Between other species as well,” he adds, black eyes fixed on Allura’s regal form. “It is how we fight in perfect symbiosis with one another, and how we know when to ally ourselves with those who can help us, and when to cut ties when our allies maintain a toxic relationship with one another. Knowing when dissent flowers between teammates thanks to hidden secrets is another quality we possess.”

Allura valiantly tries to conceal her confusion, but her very discreetly twitching left eyebrow gives her away, a tell only the Paladins are aware of. “I’m not sure I follow, King Lykonark.”

“Tell me, Princess,” Lykonark leans forward, physically moving for the first time since they entered the room. “How can you expect me to put the faith, trust, and future of my people in the hands of those who harbour secrets from one another, and allow those secrets to fester until you are unable to function as a team capable of defending this universe from the likes of Zarkon? How can I trust such a group with the fate of my people?”

No one speaks.

No one moves.

It is like everyone in the room, save for the Xyphelians themselves, stop breathing. The silence that echoes around the cavernous room is deafening, and Lance can hear the rapid pounding of his heart, the rush of blood to his head. Lance glances around anxiously, hand drifting down to rest on his bayard as he notes the complete stillness of the other Xyphelians in the room. Did they know this was coming?

He wonders if these abilities, that he can now recall Coran mentioning a few hours ago, are the reasons the Xyphelians stared so much at the Paladins on their way here. Stared at _him_ so much.

The Paladins, and Allura, stare at Lykonark with a mix of emotions playing over their faces. Lance glances around, stomach twisting painfully at their expressions. They’re shocked, worried, shaking their heads in disbelief. Keith looks angry that Lykonark would insinuate that the Paladins are keeping such monumental secrets from each other, secrets strong enough to mess with their ability to fight as Voltron.

If only he knew.

Lance gulps nervously as he watches Allura rally herself up. “King Lykonark, are you saying that you do not, in fact, wish to carry on with this alliance?”

Lykonark watches her silently for a few moments, long enough that if Lance were in her place, he would be squirming in discomfort. Allura, however, literally trained in diplomacy from probably birth, maintains a severe look on her face, shoulders straightened, chin up, facing Lykonark head-on.

Eventually, he sighs, the first sign of emotion from the Xyphelian. What that emotion is, Lance isn’t quite sure. “No, Princess. That is not what I implied. As I have said, my people need this alliance if we are to continue remaining independent from Zarkon’s rule. Our best option is, indeed, to ally ourselves to Voltron and the Coalition. However, I must have assurance that I am not putting the fate of my people in the hands of those whose bond to one another fractures thanks to the secrets they carry.”

“But we –”

Lykonark lifts one hand, and Allura cuts herself off, pressing her lips into a tight line.

“This is a negotiation, Princess Allura, and I will treat it as such. My first term, and the only one I will not retract or revise in any manner should we continue with this alliance, is that the Paladins of Voltron reveal to one another the secret each of them hides.”

Allura clenches her jaw. “That can be seen as a breach of privacy between individuals, King Lykonark. You know that.”

He nods. “But the Paladins of Voltron are not just individuals, not since they took up the mantle of defenders of the universe. They are now as one entity would be, and one being cannot work the way it should if parts of it can no longer relate to one another.” He tilts his head slightly. “Can a body move without a brain, I ask you. Can it function without a heart?”

At this, Lykonark turns his sightless eyes on the Paladins, and Lance feels his heart drop straight out of his stomach at his next words. “You must heal the negative emotions inside you, all of you, and learn to trust one another with your secrets. Especially you, Blue Paladin.”

Lance involuntarily jerks at his title, and turns to stone when Lykonark focuses his whole attention on him. His tattoo tingles warningly at the back of his neck, and the blood drains from his face as Lykonark raises a clawed hand and points straight at him. He barely notices his friends turning to him, doesn’t see what looks are on their faces as Lykonark speaks directly to him.

“Much sorrow and heartache comes from you, Lance McClain. It stems from a secret you fight so hard to hide from your teammates.” Lykonark drops his hand and slowly leans back in his throne as he focuses on the Paladins as a whole again. “Step forward, Blue Paladin.”

With his insides shaking in anxiousness, wariness coiling his muscles tight, hands trembling faintly, Lance heeds the King’s words and steps up to stand beside Allura. He tries to be as tall as she, not just physically, but emotionally stable, but as Lykonark’s eyes follow his every move, he wants to curl himself into a ball and hide until that penetrating gaze moves on. He only gives Allura a passing glance, quick enough that he doesn’t see what expression is on her face, before he looks back at the King.

When Lykonark speaks in his mother tongue, though, he doesn’t even try to hide his surprise as he gapes stupidly at the King. “Usted esconde muchas cosas de tus compañeros, de tus amigos.”

Lance can literally feel the surprise and shock rippling from the Paladins, and Allura by his side, as he gapes at Lykonark, who only gazes impassively back at him. Lance swallows thickly, trying to reel in the obvious scrambling mess his mind has dissolved into.

“Cómo –¿sabes el español?” he asks, his voice only just above a speaker, only just loud enough to carry across to the King.

“Para que puedas hablar como lo harías con aquellos que no conoce tu verdad oculta.”

“Y tú?” he whispers. “¿Sabes lo que soy?”

Lykonark is silent for a brief moment before he shifts. Then he stands, in a move so fluid and graceful that Lance would be half-tempted to call the King a dancer, if he wasn’t still trying to digest the fact that he is speaking in Spanish, his mother tongue, with an alien that he’s terrified can see deeper into Lance than Lance can himself.

He gulps nervously as Lykonark moves forward swiftly, tensing when Lykonark comes to stand before him. Most of the Xyphelians are tall, literally Galra tall give or take a few inches, but Lykonark seems even larger than that as he towers over Lance. It’s almost like the mere acknowledgement of his status as King makes him bigger than he already is, and not just in physical stature.

Lykonark’s eyes bore deep into Lance as he tries not to look away from that black gaze. Lance struggles to keep his eyes on the King, to not let them slide away and focus on anything other than that piercing black gaze that feels like its digging through his head, his _soul,_ searching for the deepest secret he buries under mountains of false self-confidence and cockiness.

“Un poder con el que has vivido toda tu vida, aún no sabes cuanto poderoso puede ser.” Lykonark tilts his head to the side, almost curiously. “Tienes miedo de esa fuerza.”

Lance instinctively stiffens when Lykonark raises a hand, but he doesn’t try to touch Lance. Instead, he taps the back of his own neck. “La razón porque escondes esto de tus amigos es por lo que está enterrado abajo de tu piel, aquí.”

Hesitantly, Lance nods. He waits for something, some twinge of pain, some electric shock travelling through his body, but nothing happens. He frowns slightly in confusion. Does the tattoo not work if someone already knows what you are?

Lykonark bows his head slightly in understanding, as if he has just found confirmation of something he suspected. That unnerves Lance. In fact, this whole situation is rattling him to the core. How the hell is the king of an alien planet speaking to him in _Spanish?_

Aliens don’t even actually understand English. It’s just thanks to the translators in the Paladins’ helmets that they can communicate with the alien species their jobs as Paladins has them interacting with on a near daily basis, as well as some complicated thing Hunk and Pidge figured out about their connection to their Lions filtering through the different languages they’re faced with. Translators installed in the Castle’s systems allow the Paladins to give simple orders like ‘end training sequence’ or ‘room, lights out’ or some such, and lets them talk with Allura and Coran without having to struggle to understand each other thanks to the Alteans not knowing any English beyond what the Paladins teach them.

For a second, he fears that those same translators will reveal to the Paladins what Lykonark is saying to him. His gut uncoils slightly when he remembers that the translators only work on the most common languages, like English. It’s why Shiro only gets to speak Japanese with Keith, and Keith with Korean to Shiro. Hunk knows a little Spanish, but not enough to carry a full conversation with Lance. Pidge and Hunk know each other’s mother tongues better, Italian and Samoan respectively.

For the first time, Lance is grateful to be alone in being the only one able to speak Spanish. But how? How can Lykonark speak Spanish to him?

Not only that, but how does Lykonark know about Lance’s powers? Actually, scratch that, that can be explained by the whole sensing-emotions gimmick, but not the total lack of reaction from Lance’s tattoo. The fact that he feels nothing, no overwhelming pain, not so much as a tease of a headache, nothing more than a tingle at the back of his neck, is throwing him off.

Lance blinks in surprise when Lykonark turns around abruptly, walking back to his throne with as much effortless elegance and poise he had in leaving it. His robe, stiff as it looks, flutters a little at the hems as he turns and settles back in his throne, eyes still pinning Lance to where he stands beside a distressed Allura trying to conceal that distress behind a placid, if nettled, face.

“Créeme cuando digo que yo lamento tener que hacer esto. Pero no tengo otra opción.” The King sounds sorrowful, and Lance wonders if it’s genuine. “Mi gente necesitan está alianza igual como tu equipo, Pero no podemos poner nuestras vidas en las manos de los que no pueden confiar en sus propios compañeros.”

For a second, he doesn’t quite understand what the King means. What does he mean, he’s ‘sorry’? What does he mean, Lance doesn’t trust his teammates? Of course he trusts them! He’d give his life for them, he’s fighting this war with them, for them. What the hell is Lykonark talking about?

It only takes him repeating Lykonark’s words in his head before Lance’s eyes widen as the realization of what he’s saying strikes him like a bolt of lightning. He’s quite sure he looks like he’s seen a ghost, by this point, or is becoming one himself. He feels like his soul is leaving his body, leaving him to deal with this mess he stumbled into.

“No, por favor,” he pleads, uncaring for the faint warble in his voice. “No entiendes. Hay una razón porque mi gente no se revelan a los de afuera, por favor!”

This time, Lykonark ignores Lance entirely as he returns his whole attention back to Allura, who is practically quavering with curiosity and more than a little miffed at the foreign language exchange she couldn’t participate in.

“You must heal the rift of negative emotions inside you, all of you, and learn to trust one another with your secrets.” He repeats gravely, switching back to a language everyone in the room understands, leaving Lance reeling as he sluggishly tries to comprehend what he’s saying through the shock coursing through him. “Reveal to one another your secrets, heal the emotional tears between you, and we will have an alliance.”

Lance is trembling where he stands, under the weight of the King’s gaze, from the burns in his skin where his friends stare at him. He glances back to see Shiro clenching his Galra arm into a fist, as if he’s ready to physically fight someone at the distressed quaver in Lance’s tone. Pidge is anxious, nervously shifting from one foot to another as she watches the proceeds. Hunk looks downright terrified, glancing around at the silent and still Xyphelians around them, before looking to Lance as if he’s trying to catch his attention. Lance turns away before they can make eye contact, knowing he just might break down then.

He looks away from Hunk to Keith, and he’s…he’s standing a lot closer than he had been when Lance stepped forward at Lykonark’s call. He’s almost close enough that if Lance stretches, he’ll touch Keith’s shoulder. His hand is gripping the handle of his bayard so tight his knuckles are white. His entire body quivers with wired tension, barely concealed by the bulk of his armour. He’s staring at Lance, not Lykonark, with such a confusing myriad of emotions that flit too fast over his face for Lance to discern what one is before another takes its place, and another, and another, in an endless cycle.

When he sees Lance looking at him, he opens his mouth to say something, but Lance tears his gaze away a second before he can. He grits his teeth and forces himself to remember that he’s been through more, he’s been through worse, so, so much worse. He will not crumble now –but he nearly loses all his false composure at the King’s final words, and the implications of what it’ll mean if it’s _his_ fault this alliance falls through.

“If you do not do so, then neither can I put the lives of my people in your hands.”

↭§↭

The team is fast growing impatient with him, and he knows it.

They’re all gathered around a large round table that looks like it literally grew out of the floor in Shiro’s quarters of the tree-palace in the west wing, but still close enough to the centre of the palace so they’ll know if something happens. Lance has no idea how the Xyphelians wrangled it considering the rest of the tree-palace follows the same blue-pink palette pretty much everywhere, but Shiro’s room is themed in dark swathes of colour occasionally cut through with white, like the streak in his hair, like his armour.

They’ve changed out of their armour into their regular clothes, having stopped by their own quarters themed in their colours first. This gives Lance the perfect opportunity to toy with the increasingly distressed hem of his jacket, a nervous tick he can’t quite get rid of.

Allura and Shiro sit beside each other on one end of the table, while Hunk, Pidge, and Lance sit on the other side, Lance flanked by the genius duo yet still feeling the loneliest he has ever been since coming to space. Keith leans on the wall somewhere behind Lance, arms crossed and choosing to remain silent as he watches the Paladins (except Lance, who sits just as quiet as Keith), argue about what their next move will be.

Lance adamantly refuses to tell anyone about what the King says to him, even as Allura’s curious gaze slowly gives way to frustration, then downright _anger_ at his continual refusal. He can tell the others are annoyed, though they look more concerned than angry over Lance’s extended silence on the matter.

But what can he tell them? Nothing, that’s what.

He can’t tell the others that Lykonark called him out on the biggest secret he’s managed to keep from them for over a year. He can’t tell them what he is, why his powers are acting up, why he ran away to the Garrison to escape the mess his family are entangled in, why he sometimes wanders the Castle’s halls for hours on end, thinking of home, before drifting to the holo-deck and crying beneath the rotating holographic sphere of his home.

He knows if he says that, any of that, they’ll want to know what that secret is, and he just –he can’t do it. That’s not a step he can make, not without some serious repercussions to himself, and he doesn’t –he doesn’t like pain, okay? Call him a coward, but he’s seen the worst of what happens to those who reveal themselves to outsiders. Not only that, it’s his birthday tomorrow. He’s nineteen _tomorrow_ , and it’s too close. He doubts he’ll ever be ready to potentially face the same thing.

But despite the looks, he doesn’t budge from his stance, and eventually, the team move on from that point.

“Okay, look, arguing about it is getting us nowhere.” Shiro says tiredly, scrubbing a hand over his face. Guilt squirms in Lance’s stomach at the sight of the dark circles under Shiro’s eyes, but he keeps quiet as a mouse. “I know that none of us want to do this –”

“I most certainly _do not,_ and I think I’ve made that plenty clear.” Pidge interrupts bluntly, a scowl on her face that almost perfectly matches the one Keith’s sporting. “I mean, secrets are secrets for a _reason._ And what, this king just wants us to throw them around like they’re candy?”

“We need this alliance, Pidge.” Shiro gently reminds her.

“And King Lykonark does have a point,” Hunk mumbles, biting his lip as he furrows his brow. “I mean, I don’t know, but I guess we’d work better if we knew each other well enough to know our secrets? It’d make us a better team, right? And it’s not like the King has some ulterior motive. He probably just wants us to be the best we can be, admittedly so his people are in the right hands, but that’s not a bad motive. He’s a king, his people’s best interests are sort of his thing.”

“Hunk’s right.” Allura agrees. Lance curls tighter in on himself, wishing he could make himself small enough to simply disappear. Or maybe turn invisible. Why couldn’t _that_ be one of his powers? Fucking unfair. “We need this alliance, and so do the Xyphelians, and it appears that the only way either of us are going to get what we want is by complying with the King’s demand.”

“So, what, we just tell each other our secrets?” Pidge demands. She gestures at Shiro. “You’re saying you’re fine with telling us your secret. Or Hunk, you’re cool with this?” Hunk just shrugs helplessly. Lance isn’t too surprised about that; Hunk doesn’t seem the type to keep any ground-breaking secrets, if any at all.

Pidge twists around in her seat to look back at the Red Paladin. “Keith? What about you?”

Keith doesn’t say anything, just watching the rest of the team for a long moment. For a moment, Lance feels a flicker of hope light up inside him. Maybe Keith has a secret he doesn’t want to share with anyone either, alliance or no alliance. Maybe together they can come up with some alternative, some way to wiggle out of exposing their secrets to one another.

Then Keith nods once, slowly, and Lance’s stomach shrivels into a tight ball of tension that no amount of slow, steady breathing will ease.

“Pidge,” Shiro says. “We need this alliance. We need the resources on this planet, and the help of the Xyphelians in battles, and the information they have on the Galra’s military movements.”

Allura nods in agreement. “And you are the one who found the record from that battlecruiser that indicated a slave ship came through this guardant. I do not know if it is your brother and father, but it could get us back on track to finding your family.”

Pidge visibly deflates at the reminder, chewing her bottom lip as she fixes a stare on her hands clenched into fists in her lap. Lance wonders if he can call it a low blow for Allura to use Pidge’s family as an excuse like that, but he knows he can’t, not really. Securing this alliance matters to Pidge just as much as it does for any of them, maybe more so because of the added incentive of finding her family.

Finally, after a long moment of silence in which the Paladins mull over their limited choices, Shiro clears his throat. “Are we all in agreement?”

Hunk says yes. Keith grunts his affirmation from his place at the wall. Pidge doesn’t reply for a full minute before she nods curtly.

Then they’re all staring at him. He can feel it, their gazes boring into his skin like caustic acid. He gulps and raises his head to find them all looking at him expectantly.

“I…” Lance gulps. What the hell can he say? The truth is, nothing. There is nothing he can say, and he can’t lie and say something else to throw them off, not with the way Lykonark called him out like that. There’s no way out of this except denial, and that’s quite possibly the worst choice.

This whole situation _sucks._

His bottom lips trembles as he uncrosses his arms from around his legs and drops them to the ground, hiding his shaking hands under his legs. “I –I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” Pidge snaps. Lance marvels at how quick she switches from flat-out refusal to instant acceptance in a matter of minutes. “That’s not good enough, Lance.”

“I just can’t.” He repeats.

Gods, he wishes he had something else to say instead of just a pathetic ‘can’t’. That’s not good enough –Mami always used to say, _It’s not a matter of ‘you can’t. It’s ‘you won’t’._

What would she say to him now? What would she tell him to do when his life quite possibly hangs in the balance, right alongside all those aliens, _people,_ who depend on this alliance to happen? Would she still tell him that, or would she tell him to keep their secret safe, to keep his people safe, no matter how far from home he is?

“Lance,” Hunk says gently, and oh gods, Lance wants to cave and just let everything go, but he _can’t._ “You don’t have to worry. Whatever secret you have, it’s not going to be bad enough that we’ll hate you.”

 _That’s not the problem,_ he thinks, desperately wishing he could at least tell them _why._ But he can’t do that either, because that’ll probably set his tattoo off, too.

“Lance, we’re all doing this whether we want to or not.” Keith says, pushing off from the wall and coming to stand by the chair between Hunk and Shiro. He crosses his arms over the top of the chair, leaning on it as he fixes those strange, shifting violet-grey eyes on Lance in a look that isn’t really annoyed, isn’t really relaxed. Alert, observing, watching. “So just suck it up and do it.”

Hunk shoots Keith a look that clearly says, _Can you be any more of a brute, dude?_

Keith simply shrugs.

Hunk sighs and reaches over and puts a reassuring hand on Lance’s shoulder, but the touch is like fire torching his skin. Lance jerks away, stumbling as he shoves his chair back and stands to just get some _space_ from everyone. He catches sight of the surprise and hurt in Hunk’s eyes, and he feels like absolute shit at being the reason for it.

Most (all) of the time, he doesn’t mind being touched. He has a big family; touch is just something that comes with the package. Especially with Allie, she’s always somehow been in physical contact with him, enough to ground him in reality.

For the first few months after he got to space, he felt touch deprived because it could never be around Allie he held hands with, or Allie whose shoulders he slung an arm around, or Allie whose fist he bumped, or Allie he trained with. After eighteen years of always being around her, of always having access to each other to talk or cry or laugh with, come night or day, rain or sunshine, being suddenly ripped away from her, unable to even let her know he’s alive, was one of his most excruciating experiences. 

It’s never really mattered so much if someone touches his shoulder or holds his hand or ruffles his hair. In fact, he likes it, loves the attention. It’s something for him to centre himself with. But ever since what happened to make the voices a big part of his life, there are times when he just...can’t deal with it. Physical touch sometimes makes his skin crawl like worms are wriggling inside him, instead of soothing him.

It still hurts him to be the reason Hunk looks like that. Hunk, who’s just so good, so full of light and kindness, eager to help anyone, to be there to listen to anyone’s problems, to help in any conceivable way.

“You don’t understand. I –”

“Then _make us_ understand, Lance!” Pidge snarls, standing as well and getting in his face, enough that he steps away until his back touches the wall, more than a little scared she might physically attack him. “It’s not that freaking hard. I don’t want to do this, but I want to find my family more.”

 ** _:such a disappointment:_** Something deep inside him hisses. At this point, he doesn’t even know if it’s the voices or his own pestilent mind turning against him.

A sensation of being cornered like an animal flashes through him, loosening his control over his power. Something cold, like how Blue feels in his mind but not exactly, still distinctly different from her cool touch, slithers down his hands. He glances down just fast enough to see white-blue frost following the curves of his life lines in his palms. He quickly looks up again, clenching his hands into fists as he struggles to get a lid on his powers and fend off Pidge’s rapidly growing ire.

“Look, I’m sorry –” he winces as the cold pricks the inside of his wrist, right where his worst scar is, as if leaving him a goodbye as he shoves it away. He’s already scratching his wrist before he’s even really aware of it. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t –this isn’t something I can just _say_. It’s not my choice.”

“Lance,” Allura says sternly, very obviously done with his bullshit. “This is not something we can negotiate on. Lykonark has already made that more than clear. Whether you like it or not, you have to tell us your secret. Everyone else is doing it, despite not wanting to.”

**_:and if you don’t they can always get someone else to be the Blue Paladin someone who’s not as_ ** **damaged _as you are because you’re not needed you’re expendable you’re replaceable it’ll be easy for them:_**

“Yes, you are entitled to your secrets,” Allura continues, and he feels another treacherous spark of hope. “But you’re not just ordinary people anymore.” The spark dies. “You are Voltron; you are Paladins who pilot the five Lions that make up Voltron. You defend the universe from the likes of Zarkon, but you – _we –_ cannot do it alone. We need allies, and we will always have to make compromises to do what needs to be done, even if we don’t want to.”

“I understand, Princess, I do,” he starts, desperation tinging his voice. “But I –”

“You’re keeping me from finding my family, Lance, don’t you get that?” Pidge growls at him, face a mask of hurt anger. “Matt and my dad might have passed through this quadrant two weeks ago. Lance, whatever data the Xyphelians can give me, it could help me find them.”

Lance pales at her words, and self-hatred swirls like a black pool of filth in his gut. He knows how much Pidge wants her family back, how many sleepless nights she’s spent pouring over data they retrieved from any Galra ships and command centres they could infiltrate. Every time he tries picturing himself in her shoes, with Allie missing, or any of his siblings, or his parents, he knows he wouldn’t be able to manage as well as Pidge has for all this time, not knowing if her brother and father are even alive or not.

He knows how important this is for Pidge, but **_:just like everyone else:_** all he can do is disappoint her, everyone.

“I _can’t,_ okay?” he yells, frayed nerves snapping as he crosses his arms over his chest to keep himself from scratching at the insides of his wrists. He wishes he could just run as far away as he could. “I –I can’t. Just stop asking already!”

“Lance, this is about more than just you,” Shiro speaks up, watching him carefully. Not harshly, he says it in a gentle voice, but it’s like a slap to Lance’s face anyways. “We need this alliance. Everyone is going through this. It’s not like we want to share our secrets, but if that’s what it takes to get the Xyphelians on board, and to find Pidge’s family, then we have to do what needs to be done.”

Lance quails at the stern, disappointed tone. Shiro is Lance’s hero, his leader –Lance looks up to him, and to see that expression on Shiro’s face, to see the way Shiro looks like he expected more from Lance…it’s like having a shoe stomp all over his heart, a shoe that has sharp metal spikes on the sole, just to hurt more.

His shoulders slump as he drops his gaze to the floor. He’s tired. He’s…he’s so tired. He’s tired of the secrets, and the running away, and the memories that won’t leave him alone, and the _voices,_ gods, the _voices_ are almost the worst. He’s tired of it all, and he wishes he could tell his team everything.

But he can’t.

Because he’s heard what happens when his people try to reveal to an outsider what they truly are. He’s _seen_ it happen. The tattoo on the back of his neck isn’t just an ordinary tattoo, and it isn’t just his family’s sigil. It’s a warning, as well. He once saw what it does to someone who tried to tell an outsider of their people’s secrets. It didn’t end well. It was bad enough that the horror of seeing it stretches its oily black fingers to him now, freezing the words in his throat, locking his muscles with tension as he drops his gaze guiltily to the ground.

He wants to tell them, he does, and he’d probably even risk doing it on any other day –but not today. Or this week. Or even this month. Not on his birthday, or too soon after, or before for that matter. He’d be able to deal with the pain when it comes after he tells them, he thinks (hopes), but he has no idea what will happen if he does it literally on his nineteenth birthday, the single most important day any of his people can survive to. If he’s not careful, if he’s not strong enough, he knows he could die.

Once, he wouldn’t have minded the prospect of dying. After all the absolute shit Lance has had to deal with from birth, and that time in the beginning when the voices first made their presence known, when he didn’t know how to deal with them, he’d been close to death and actually _wanted_ it.

He’d wanted the release from the pain and heartache and despair and sorrow, and _guilt,_ the never-ending ache of guilt that is always present, buried deep in his heart like an ice pick that digs a little deeper with every beat of his heart. Death had been that release from it all. He’d _craved_ it, sought after it, hunted it.

He doesn’t wear his signature and favourite jacket all the time for no reason.

But it’s different now. He’s stronger, and even though he’s the gods know how far away from his family, he’s still got his space family. He’s got a purpose, a reason to fight. He’s got Shiro to look up to and follow, Allura to teasingly flirt with and admire, Coran to listen to his endless tales and laugh at his ridiculous moustache, Hunk to talk with and taste test his food, Pidge to tease and march her to bed when she’s pulled too many all-nighters in a row, and…and Keith. He’s got Keith, too. Maybe not in the way he wants or isn’t ready for, but Keith’s still here.

He doesn’t want to die.

“I’m sorry, Shiro, I am, guys,” he whispers quietly. He doesn’t need to look up to know Shiro’s looking at him with that disappointed gaze. He doesn’t want to look up to see the looks anyone is giving him. He can feel them, those eyes on him, the replaceable Paladin. “And I want to, I know we need this alliance, I _know._ But I can’t.”

Before anyone can say anything in retaliation, all hell breaks loose when the Paladins jump at the sound of Coran’s voice shouting from the comm installed in a dainty silver-esque bracelet at Allura’s wrist.

“Paladins, Princess, you must return to the Castle quickly! A Galra battlecruiser just wormholed into Xyphelian airspace –they’re about to attack!”

↭§↭

They’ve dealt with enough Galra battlecruisers to be considered seasoned veterans at how to blow them to kingdom come. Things still get a little iffy when massively supercharged weapons of destruction are brought into the mix by the enemy.

The battle goes relatively easy (keyword; relatively) without having to form Voltron, a feat now rendered impossible thanks to the tensions riding high, especially with how mentally closer they are to each other when piloting their Lions. Lance aims, shoots, dodges, slices at the Galra fighters with Blue’s claws, but he does so silently.

He doesn’t crow in enthusiastic delight at every well-aimed shot like he usually does. He doesn’t pull off any mildly life-threatening show-off manoeuvres. He doesn’t tease Keith and goad him into a competition to see how many fighters they take out like he would have. He doesn’t call out to Hunk and Pidge when they eliminate fighters on their tales, or speak like a soldier to his commanding officer when Shiro directs them in the Lion formations. He doesn’t flirt with Allura over the comms as she helps Shiro guide them around, or joke with Coran as he tries to keep the mood light-hearted despite keeping the Castle defences up against the Galra battlecruiser engaging it.

In fact, he feels pretty sick as he takes down one fighter after another, only for them to be replaced as quickly as they’re felled. His stomach rolls nauseatingly, his hands are shaking, his head hurts, the back of his neck tingles with sharp pricks of pain every time he thinks about how all this could be avoided if he just tells them the truth. He feels terrible, especially because he’s too distracted with fighting to keep a lid on the voices, their insidious words leaking like black oil into his mind.

They whisper terrible things to him, plummeting his mood, reminding him again and again that this fighter or that one could stab Blue’s eyes and him and it won’t matter, the team will find another Paladin, they’d be better off with someone more capable than him. Telling him that Blue could suddenly reject him in the middle of battle, stop working, eject him and let him fend for himself against this big, cruel, lonely universe and it won’t matter, the team will find another Paladin. Telling him he could dive in the way of the ion canon appearing on the Galra battlecruiser and aimed at the Castle’s weakening particle barrier and it won’t matter, the team will –

Wait.

Hold the fuck up.

Ion canon?

Lance spins Blue around after he shoots an ice beam into the little view he has of the engine room to set the fighter in front of him exploding in a ball of fire. There, the Castle shoots beam after beam at the battlecruiser, definitely weakening it, but not enough, not with the distance the Castle has to maintain to move around easily enough to keep its particle barrier up and avoid the battlecruiser’s shots. Then he sees the ion canon on the cruiser’s top deck, charging faster (faster, it’s definitely going faster) than the others they’ve faced.

“Joder,” he breathes, quiet enough that the others don’t hear him. He doesn’t need to say more to warn them, though, when Allura speaks through the comms in their helmets.

“Paladins, the particle barrier isn’t going to last if that ion canon hits us,” she informs them, voice brittle from the effort of steering the Castle around in ways Lance doubts it was built to.

“The Princess is right, Paladins!” Coran’s frantic voice comes on.

One of Blue’s view screen flickers to show an image of Coran frantically pushing levers and buttons on an unseen control panel while orange and red flashes wash over his faces from the shots the particle barrier is taking. In the background, Lance can just see Allura standing with her hands on the dual control pedestals, forehead beaded in sweat, white hair escaping its bun in frizzy tendrils. A second later, four other view screens pop up to reveal the strained faces of his teammates, his friends, struggling on their own because they can’t form Voltron.

 ** _:because of:_** him.

Coran turns his attention briefly to the Paladins on the screens, eyes wide with panic. “The particle barrier can withstand one hit with the ion canon, but it’ll disintegrate after that, and that battlecruiser is somehow charging its canon much faster than others we’ve come across.”

“Coran, redirect all unnecessary maintenance power and centre it on the particle barrier.” Allura commands.

Coran nods. “Right away –oh no,” he murmurs, face paling.

“What is it, Coran?” Shiro asks through clenched teeth as he’s hit by a fighter, before he spins Black around and slashes through the fighter’s underbelly, effectively shutting it down.

Coran visibly gulps. “I’m redirecting all power to the particle barrier and focusing it on the hull, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to withstand that ion canon. It’s charging too fast, and the readings say this one is at a stronger capacity than the others.”

“Paladins,” Allura calls. “You have to take out that battlecruiser. The particle barrier won’t recharge enough to defend the Castle with how fast the ion canon is going. Our comms will be offline as we redirect the power.” With that, she cuts off.

“Your heard the Princess,” Shiro speaks, the view screens turning off so they can focus on the battle at hand and not each other’s frustrated and irritated faces. “Hunk, I want you to act as a battering ram to knock the battlecruiser’s aim off course to buy us some time.”

“Yellow on the way!” Hunk shoots off to do just that.

“Keith,” Shiro continues. “Your Lion’s the fastest, so keep the fighters away from the rest of us.”

“Got it,” Keith affirms, Red streaking away with a herd of fighters on his tail.

“Pidge, if you can use your Lion’s cloaking device to get close enough to the fighters on Keith and take them out to help, do it.”

“Right.” Pidge is determined and professional as Green melts out of view.

“Lance,” it’s just him imagining the tense way Shiro says his name, right? **_:no it’s not you idiot it’s really not he hates you for ruining voltron:_** “Try to use your ice beam to cover up the canon’s exit, maybe the entirety of it. I’ll try to break through it.”

“Yeah,” is all he says before he charges forward, shooting at the battlecruiser in any way he can to distract it from firing at Shiro as he uses Black’s jawblade to slash through the tough exterior of the battlecruiser’s sides.

He’s just got his ice beam charged up, ready to aim and fire, when he passes by the front of the ion canon and catches sight of the tell-tale bright, glowing purple beam that means the canon’s seconds away from discharging. The purple is tinged with black, and he thinks that perhaps this canon is faster –and stronger –because there’s some kind of Druidic magic in it, too. His eyes widen as he looks around, seeing everyone else doing their best against the odds, the Castle’s particle barrier shifted to focus on the hull and to take on the brunt force of the canon’s attack.

It’s too late for Shiro’s tactic to work.

He’s not even really aware he’s urged Blue ahead until she’s situated right in the ion canon’s path, cockpit filled with purple-pink light that momentarily blinds him. He sends out a wordless apology to Blue, who returns it by firmly wrapping herself around her Paladin as if that alone is enough to protect him, returning his apology and assuring him it’s all right, he need never apologize to her.

He doesn’t know if he screams when the ion canon hits Blue. He thinks he does. His voice feels hoarse, his throat scrubbed raw like sandpaper along its walls. All he knows is pain hits him from everywhere. Sparks of electricity fill the cockpit and Lance’s back arches off the seat as the electricity sweeps through him and a scream falls from his lips. The electric shocks immobilize him, rattle his bones, fry his muscles, boil his blood, and _breaks all his defences down._

His power bursts out of him in a sudden fury that catches him off-guard. He feels it reaching, stretching, shielding his body as he’s jerked around in his chair from the violent hit. He feels it reaching, stretching, out into space, out and around Blue’s big body, protecting her from the hits of metal from the destroyed fighters, taking the brunt of the hits on himself, on his own body.

He feels something hit Blue’s underside, feels something inside him cracking, knows it’s a bone, and still he keeps his power shielding Blue. He feels the large wing of a ruined Galra fighter clip Blue just below her ear, feels it sting his temple, blood dripping from his own head, and still he keeps his power shielding Blue.

It’s unconscious, automatic, to help her, just as it is instinctive for her to protect him.

He bites down on his lip so hard to keep another pained cry from tearing out of his throat that his teeth rip skin and his mouth fills with the copper tang of his own blood, but he doesn’t notice it as the walls come crashing down and then the voices are here.

Everywhere.

All he can feel is _them,_ their black, oily presence slithering through his mind, eating, devouring everything they can touch. They are a swirling dark mass of mania, grief, longing and _rage,_ an indomitable rage that consumes him from the inside out, makes him long for things he can’t name. They seep into the cracks of his soul, through the scars on his wrists and stomach, until he doesn’t know who he is anymore.

He doesn’t know where he begins and where they end, or if he’s getting it wrong and he’s been them all along, pretending to be a person he isn’t, a person called Lance, a person who defends the universe when he can’t even protect his mind from himself, from them, from what he is together with them.

He thinks he hears his team calling his name. Somehow, he doesn’t know how, but their voices are enough to drag him out of the confusing miasma the voices have trapped him in. He desperately searches for that control, that iron band he needs to keep the voices locked away. When he finds it, he grips it hard as he can and _yanks_ it to him, shoving the voices back in the hell they come from, and slaps the iron band over the door.

They’re not completely gone, but it’s enough, enough for him to sluggishly dig his way out of the mud they’ve made out of his mind, enough that when he comes to, they don’t fill his ears with their poisonous words. Instead, his ears catch Keith shouting his name, Pidge’s sniffles, Hunk desperately trying to keep calm, Shiro trying to calm _Keith_ even as he calls Lance’s name too, asking him if he’s okay.

But he’s imagining that, right? There’s no way they’d be worried about him. They hate him. He’s keeping them from getting an alliance they need, to fight Zarkon, to find Pidge’s family. Lance grits his teeth, forcing himself to work through the heaviness in his limbs, and peels open his eyes.

Blue’s cockpit is dark, the only illumination coming from red lights somewhere behind his chair. All the screens are blackened, and Blue doesn’t respond when he manages to move himself forward just enough to weakly push at the joysticks. Worry squirms in his gut like a live thing at that, and he shuts his eyes again, searching for Blue. He almost sobs in relief when he feels her, there, weakened but still kicking, though not enough for her to move at all as she floats in dead space.

“…ance…Lance…dammit, _answer me!”_

“Cállate,” he groans, clutching his head and wishing he could take off his helmet to get the voices –his _team’s_ voices –out of his head and just cradle it in his arms against the pounding headache.

Instead, he keeps his eyes open and peers through the red gloom out of Blue’s windshield. Before him is the ruined battlecruiser, long jagged tears in the metal of its underbelly, ion canon melted down, sparks of electricity still dancing over its ruined expanse, and floating upside down.

 ** _:they didn’t need you they did it all on their own you’re not needed:_** the voices cackle. Lance doesn’t have enough strength in him to argue, not when he agrees with them.

“Lance!” Hunk shouts, a sob of relief breaking out. “Oh my god, oh my god Lance, are you okay, are you –”

“M’fine,” he mumbles sluggishly, easing himself back into the seat and trying not to jostle what he thinks is a cracked, if not broken, rib. He takes in a deep breath to gather strength, and speaks into the expectant silence in the comms. “Blue’s out of commission.”

“We’ll get her fixed up in the Castle. But Lance, are you all right?” Shiro asks. “Are you injured?”

 _Yes._ “No.”

“Buddy,” Hunk interjects. “You don’t sound fine.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m coming to get you,” Keith says firmly, tone brooking no room for argument, not that anyone tries. Lance sees Red flying over to him quickly, yellow eyes glowing and somehow, for a giant robotic lion, looking fiercely _angry._

What the hell’s she got to be mad about? She wasn’t hit with a Druidic ion canon. He feels Blue’s faint rumble of amusement (and _knowing?_ What does she know?) at his disgruntlement.

“That was a really big hit,” Pidge says quietly, her words almost a whisper as Red latches on to Blue’s neck and starts steering them back to the Castle, which, Lance can now see, is okay, if not worse for wear. “Why did you do that?”

Guilt wiggles in him at her words. “Takes a lot more than that to put me down, Pidgey.” He doesn’t tell her that he did it because he’s the least important one in the team, the one who’s easier to replace with another, more capable Paladin.

It was close, though. He doesn’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten his powers in control in time. Blue would’ve been okay to take the hits of flying debris, since she can be repaired, but if Lance kept taking them for her, he might have punctured his lungs with the cracked/broken rib, or given himself a worse concussion than the one he probably has right now.

Not to mention the voices, and what he knows would have happened if they’d been left loose for even a second longer.

Shiro speaks up then. “Is anyone hurt?” A chorus of ‘no’s’ echo. “Okay. Everyone, get back to the Castle. Keith, if Lance is injured –”

“I’m not –”

“If Lance is injured,” Shiro continues heedlessly. “Get him to the med-bay and in a healing pod. We’ll debrief later.”

“Got it,” Keith replies.

Lance grunts in frustration and reaches up to click his comms off. What’s the point of listening to them talk about him like he’s not there? And yes, admittedly, he is injured, but he doesn’t need a nanny to take him to the med-bay. It’s _his_ fault he’s hurt. If he just told them his secret, they won’t have argued with each other, and they could have formed Voltron and avoided this whole mess.

It’s **_:your fault:_**

Red gets Blue into her hangar in record time before heading back out to get to her own hangar. Lance sits in the silence of the cockpit, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the chair. He focuses on breathing, trying to ignore the twinge of pain with every rattling breath he draws in. He tries to calm himself, to gather enough strength to push himself out of Blue and get to the med-bay by himself, but before he knows it, Keith is standing there, pulling Lance’s helmet off and tapping his cheeks gently.

“Hey,” Keith murmurs, in the softest voice Lance has ever heard from him. “Come on, wake up. We need to get you to the med-bay.”

Lance scowls, weakly batting Keith’s hands away and hissing when the move jostles at his injured rib. “M’fine.”

Keith gives him a flat look. “And I’m a cat.”

Lance manages to smile a little at that. “Well, you are half a furry.”

Keith rolls his eyes, smiling faintly. “Come on, let’s go.” The dry exasperation melts away. His eyes look at a point over Lance’s shoulder, a little glazed with memory. “That was a really heavy blow, Lance.”

“It was nothing,” Lance scoffs feebly, unnerved at the open worry on Keith’s usually indifferent face.

“Your head is bleeding, and I can hear there’s something wrong with your breathing. Who knows what else got hurt from that.”

Lance presses his lips to a thin line. “It was worth it.”

Keith blinks at him, then frowns. “I thought I was supposed to be the reckless one,” he mutters to himself with a shake of his head. “Come on, Lance. Let me help you.”

He finally acquiesces to accepting Keith’s help when he tries to get up on his own, only to fall back in his seat when his legs turn to jelly and bite back a cry of pain as his rib presses in on something. Lance grits his teeth and focuses on breathing as he slings his arm around Keith’s shoulders and holds his helmet with his free hand, Keith holding his weight against himself with an arm around Lance’s waist.

They walk through the empty halls of the Castle in silence, Lance just trying to get enough air in his lungs. After a while, he hears Keith’s helmet comms crackle and Coran’s voice comes through, asking if Keith can handle getting Lance into a pod himself, on account of needing to deal with several emergencies with the Castle’s systems thanks to having to shut down several functions to hold up the particle barrier. Keith affirms that he can before shutting his comm off.

Keith gently sets Lance down on one of the med-bay’s beds, taking Lance’s helmet and placing it on the side before pulling off his own and putting it next to Lance’s. Lance tries very hard not to stare with an enraptured look on his face at the way Keith’s hair is ruffled messily, some hair sticking to the back of his neck from sweat clinging to the dark strands.

“Think you can take off your armour, or should I do it?” Keith asks, crossing his arms and planting himself in front of Lance, as if to physically block any attempts Lance might make to escape the med-bay.

“I can undress myself, thank you,” Lance mutters. “I’m not a baby.”

As soon as he tries to reach back and undo the clasp keeping the top half of his armour connected, pain explodes in his left side and he groans, breath hissing through his teeth when he tries to curve his body inward to ease the pressure in his side. Keith immediately jumps forward, hands making quick work of getting the armour off. Lance is at least grateful that Keith makes no comment that he cannot, in fact, take off his armour by himself.

Once Lance is dressed in just his black flight suit, Keith steps back and gets one of the med-bay’s beige bodysuits and hands it to Lance before he heads over to one of the healing pods. As he starts tapping at it to get it up and running, Lance painstakingly makes his way through shedding off the flight suit and slipping into the bodysuit. He’s sweating and his limbs tremble from the effort of it by the time he’s done, and absolutely not in the mood for anything but falling unconscious when Keith speaks up.

“Why won’t you tell anyone your secret?”

Lance suppresses a groan only because it hurts his throat. “It’s my secret. I’m entitled to keeping it.”

Speaking, though, sends him into a hacking fit of coughing that hurts so much that tears spring to his eyes. He grips the edge of the bed with one hand, so tight his knuckles go white, as his other hand comes up to cover his mouth as he coughs. He hears Keith call his name, but his eyes are blurry and mind foggy from the haze of pain clouding him. When he pulls his hand away from his mouth, a puddle of blood sits cupped in his palm.

Lance pulls his lips back at the sight of it, using his other hand to wipe whatever blood is on his lips. He looks up again to see Keith hurriedly press a teal blue button on the control panel, and the healing pod’s outer case whooshes open. Keith spins around stalks back to Lance like a predator. Lance watches his approach warily, prepared for that famous temper to lash out at him.

To say he’s shocked when instead, Keith stops and stares at him for a long moment, then reaches out and brushes his gloved thumb over blood Lance smeared on his cheek, would be an understatement of the century. Lance gapes at him silently, and the quiet and lack of response (read; flirtatious teasing) seems to snap Keith out of whatever stupor he’s in. He blinks and pulls his hand away.

Keith clears his throat, pink tingeing his cheeks as he avoids Lance’s eyes and helps Lance stand. He keeps his touch light and careful as he puts an arm around Lance’s waist again to get him to the healing pod. Just before they reach there, though, Keith speaks again.

“Everyone else is probably going to tell you that being ‘entitled’ to your secret is putting the universe at risk,” he starts.

“I bet you’re everyone else, too, huh?” Lance replies sadly.

Keith shakes his head, and Lance is very tempted to reach up and run his hands through that hair, just to see if it’s as soft as it looks this close. “No. I mean, yeah, the entire universe’s fate is at risk, no biggie,” Lance scoffs derisively at that. Keith smiles a little before it fades away. “But you are, too. We couldn’t form Voltron today because of this, and you got hurt. You just, jumped in the way before anyone could do anything, and that ion canon could have killed you Lance.”

Lance swallows, wincing as the move stretches his aching throat. “I know.”

Keith carefully helps him into the healing pod, only stepping away once Lance is adequately supported by the straps of the healing pod holding him up. He gives Lance a long, searching look as his hand hovers over the pod’s control panel.

“Is it worth it?” he asks slowly. He’s looking up at Lance with a strangely vulnerable look in his eye, a softness to him that Lance can’t quite interpret, because all he’s ever really seen from Keith is the hard edges of a boy reacting to things in the only way he knows how.

“What?” he asks, despite knowing what Keith will say.

“Your secret. Keeping it. Is it worth all this?” he gestures at Lance’s bruised and battered body in the healing pod.

Lance looks at him for a long moment before his eyes drift away, head tipped back in the pod as his mind brings up painful memories, reminders of what he is, what he can do, why he hides from everyone.

“It’s not about it being worth it.” He mumbles tiredly, more to himself than to Keith. “It’s whether or not I’m willing to risk it.”

There’s a heavy pause at that. Then, Lance opens his eyes when the healing pod’s door whooshes closed, the screen tinting everything on the outside in teal. Keith stands with his arms crossed in front of the healing pod, a curious frown on his face as he watches Lance inside.

Lance feels something settle over his mind, lulling him under a blanket of comforting darkness that lays over him. The last thing he sees as his eyes slip shut one final time is frustration, and something he can’t quite identify warring for dominance on Keith’s face. He wonders why Keith would look at him like that.

↭§↭

_He’s seven years old. He’s on Varadero Beach, his family settled on the balcony of their house, adults getting the grill ready and talking about adult things, children playing in the sparkling waters of the ocean. All is well with the world._

_Allie floats on her back with her long curly hair winding around her arms as she lies spread-eagled. Lance grins as he quietly swims over to her, keeping himself dipped underwater until just to his nose so he can breathe. Behind him, Mattie stifles his giggles by submerging himself underwater. When Lance is close enough, he ducks underwater and swims just under Allie’s innocently swimming back, waiting for the perfect moment._

_She shrieks in surprise when Lance surges up out of the water under her, throwing her up in the air with his power, his new tattoo tingling at the back of his neck. He cackles madly as she twirls in the air before flopping back into the water with a big splash. She comes up spitting water, glaring at Lance’s laughter. Then she smirks, raises her hands, and Lance knows he’s in for it._

_He’s nine years old, he and Allie looking at Mami with identical expressions of confusion as the family watches Papa stand beside the rest of the council members. Mami has tears streaming down her cheeks, lips pressed into a thin line. She’s crying, but she isn’t making a sound._

_“We will never ally ourselves with creatures like you,” one of the council member’s states firmly, gaze locked on the screen they, and all their people, and their soon-to-be-enemies, are watching. Lance sees his Papa flinch at the harsh wording. “You are an abomination unto this world, and we will never stop hunting down the likes of you and yours for as long as we exist.”_

_Lance is nine years old, not old enough to understand why this is happening, but old enough to realize his world is about to change for the worse. Old enough to see that the rosy tinge he’s been looking at the world with is false, and that all is not well, and never will be again._

_He’s thirteen, and more scared than he’s ever been as he stares up at the magnificent structure of the Order’s main headquarters rising up tall in front of him. Mami rubs her hand in circles at his back, reassuring him, as Papa puts his arm around Lance’s shoulders, reassuring him, and Allie grips his hand tight, reassuring him. He chose this, because he wants to protect his family, to keep them safe. But he’s scared._

_“No te preocupes,” Allie leans in to whisper to him. “Puede ser que no están a nuestro lado pero tampoco están del lado de ellos. No te harán daño.”_

_Lance gulps, nods. “Sí. Lo sé. Pero todos dicen que entrenamiento is super difícil.”_

_She shrugs. Her teal blue eyes, identical to his in every way, spark with mischief as she smiles impishly at him. “Si te lastiman, no te preocupes, hermanito. Yo te protegeré.”_

_Lance smiles._

_Papa taps them on their heads, smiling when they both duck their heads at the same time. “Practice your English, mis niños.”_

_He’s fifteen, and covered in his brother’s blood, and it’s his fault._

_He’s sixteen, sitting up in his bed, recovering from yet another comatose state when the voices get the best of him but he refuses to call and ask,_ beg _Allie to come home so she can help him like she always does. Mami holds him close, cradling his head as her tears soak into his hair._

_Beside her, on his Justice League blanket, is his letter of acceptance to the Galaxy Garrison school._

_“Don’t be a hero, mijo, mi precioso muchacho,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Heroes don’t make it home, and you have to survive, Alejandro. You have to live._ _Tienes que hacerlo, ¿dónde Alex no podia.”_

_She smooths her hands down the sides of his face and leans back so she can look him in the eye. Her beautiful cerulean eyes that he inherited are red-rimmed from her quiet tears. Lance feels so guilty that he is the reason she’s crying, that all he ever does is hurt the people he loves. She smiles sadly at him as he bites his lip to keep from crying, too. From the door to his room, he’s vaguely aware of his Papa’s shifting form as he stands waiting for Mami to finish._

_“You go to the Garrison, Alejandro,” she says firmly. “And you become a fighter pilot like you’ve always wanted. You make friends like you’re good at, you build a life of your own. You get away from this war, and you live your life like you should.”_

_“But what about Allie?” he asks, lips trembling. “How can I just leave like this?”_

_“You have to, mijo,” Papa speaks, walking in from the door to sit on the edge of Lance’s bed beside Mami. “Allie will be fine. She’s Declared herself, and her choice means she won’t be a target anymore. She’s safe. But you haven’t yet, and if you remain humano, they’ll always be looking for you.” Papa reaches out to cup Lance’s cheek in his palm, turning his head so Lance is looking right into his father’s eyes. “Pase lo que pase, Lance, debes vivir. Don’t let Alex’s sacrifice mean nothing.”_

_He’s seventeen, and taking Iverson’s shit so that he doesn’t turn on Hunk and Pidge, listening to him harp on and on about how he’s only in the fighter pilot class because Keith, the great prodigy Keith Kogane, dropped out._

_He’s shivering under his blanket while Hunk peacefully sleeps on the other side of their small, Spartan dorm room. He grips his pendant tight in his hand, tight enough to leave imprints of its shape on his palm as he reaches out instinctively, searching for Allie’s mind, praying for help. He sobs quietly in relief when she immediately responds, touching her mind to his, wrapping her strength around him, helping him kick the voices away, for just long enough for him to get himself back under control._

_He pushes her away as soon as it’s over, panting from the mental exertion of fighting off the voices as he sends a quick apology to Allie, wordlessly telling her he doesn’t want her to hurt herself when she’s in Dublin while he’s all the way in a desert in Arizona. Half a second later, his phone is buzzing next to his pillow. He doesn’t need to look at it to know who’s calling._

_“Lo siento, hermanito,”_ _she whispers when he picks up, her voice a little different through the thousands of miles separating them with the only thing connecting them being two phones, but still the same voice he knows. “Lo siento que que tengas que sufrir así.”_

_Lance huddles deeper under his blanket, listening to the steady breathing of Hunk sleeping on the other end of the room. “Lo sé, Allie. Lo sé.”_

_He’s eighteen, whooping with unrestrained glee as he and Keith, neck-and-neck, more than rivals but not quite there yet, tag team with their Lions in taking down the hundreds of Galra fighters streaking out of the battlecruiser the Castle and Shiro work to take down, Pidge and Hunk streaking by in yellow and green blurs as they work on the other fighters, as they all work together, as a_ team.

_He turns nineteen, and feels hated by his closest friends because he’s scared of pain, because he won’t tell them what they need to know to help them continue on in their fight against an evil man who wants nothing more than to enslave all the known universe, who is worse than the man Lance ran away from when he was sixteen._

↭§↭

When Lance stumbles out of the healing pod earlier than expected, alone in the med-bay, he’s already made his decision.

↭§↭

He follows the voices to the common room, where he finds his team sprawled out on the couches, dead tired after the intensity of the battle…how long ago? Lance shakes his head, refusing to let himself be distracted as he pushes open the door to the common room. Everyone starts, then all look surprised to see Lance awkwardly standing at the door before slowly making his way to stand on the open end of the U the pristine white couches form.

Hunk is the first to move. “Lance! You’re out early!”

“Uhm, yeah,” he mumbles, lifting a hand to scratch nervously at the back of his neck, right over his still tingling tattoo. “Guess I wasn’t hit too bad by that ion canon, huh.”

It had felt like the world was ending in white light and fire that burned him to atoms, but eh. Not that bad.

Hunk starts to stand, looking ready to barrel his way over and hug the crap out of Lance, but Lance shakes his head, stepping back a little. Another flash of hurt goes through Hunk’s eyes as he sits back down, but this time Lance hurries to explain why.

“Sorry, I’m just…I’m still a little sore. From the healing pod.”

Only half a lie. Yeah, he’s not quite up to full-strength, but his skin itches just beneath the surface, too sensitive right now. He doesn’t want Hunk to touch him and then end up unconsciously flinging Hunk away with his power because of being oversensitive right now.

Relief breaks out over Hunk’s face. “Sure, sure buddy. No problem.” Then he frowns. “You should get some shut-eye, though. And food.” He nods decisively, a plan of action set in mind. “Food will make you feel better.”

Lance smiles at that. Hunk being Hunk. Even if the rest of the team are frustrated and disappointed with Lance, he can still always count on Hunk.

He shakes his head. “Maybe later, Hunk. I…” he clears his throat, healed from all his screaming. “I have something to say.”

More like show, but, whatever. Technicalities.

“Is it this oh-so-terrible secret you can’t seem to tell us?” Pidge asks from her place next to Keith on the couch, irritation making her words harsher than they already are. “The secret that’s keeping us from securing an alliance with the space elves? That’s not letting us form Voltron and what got you hurt?”

“Pidge…” Shiro warns.

He flinches. “Yeah.” At this, he sees her visibly perk up. He gulps. There’s no way he can back out of this now. He just…he just hopes he can get enough out of him before he can’t anymore. “I’m gonna try, but, like, no promises.”

Shiro frowns from his place sitting beside Allura, who looks equally perplexed by Lance’s words. “What do you mean, ‘try’?”

“I mean, I…maldita sea, ¿por qué es tan difícil?” he swears at himself, running his hands through his hair roughly.

But shit, this is so much harder than he thought it would be. Just say the words? Ha, no, it’s not as simple as that when you don’t even know what those words _are_ to begin with. “I mean, I might not be able to get everything out before it kicks in and I can’t anymore, but I don’t know, maybe showing you will be easier? I don’t know, this is the first time I’m doing this.”

Actually, he’s pretty sure that he’d be smarter about this if he had done it before. As in, smart enough to not go through a repeat. The fact that he’s already seen what happened to someone who tried to do this once before and is _still_ going through with it, space elves alliance or no, is testament to his monumental lack of smarts.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait.” Hunk holds up his hands to quell Lance’s tirade of confusing words. “Lance, buddy, slow down. You’re not making sense. Like, literally none at all.”

“Before _what_ kicks in? Show us what?” Keith adds in, trademark scowl on his face as he crosses his arms and even his legs. Lance wonders just how stressed the Red Paladin must be to cross both. The gentleness that was on his face in the med-bay is all but gone now. Lance can’t help mourning the loss of it, wondering when he’ll get to see it again. “And what do you mean ‘before I can’t anymore’?”

His shoulders sag. He can’t even come up with decent retort like he usually would. “You’ll see what I mean.”

“I doubt your secret could be so bad.” Allura says, trying to be comforting in the face of Lance’s clear discomfort and hesitation. She might be the most obviously frustrated one of them all at Lance’s refusal to divulge his secret all this time, but she’s not vindictive about it.

“The princess is right, young Paladin,” Coran agrees by his place beside Hunk, twirling his moustache. “Secrets might look all big and scary when they’re in your mind, but once they see the light of day, they’re not quite so powerful anymore.

He chuckles weakly at that. Ha. Ha. _Ha._ “You have no idea. I might only be able to show you a little right now, but I won’t be able to talk about it for a while after that –”

“Lance –” Shiro starts.

“But _after_ that I’ll be able to talk,” he continues, ignoring Shiro. “And for quiznack’s sake, guys, do _not_ stick me in a healing pod after this.”

“But you just got out of the pod!” Keith exclaims, eyes flashing.

Coran looks more than a little concerned at that, what with how he’s in charge of maintaining the Paladins’ health. “Now, hold on just a tick, my boy –”

Lance does not hold on a tick.

Before he can talk himself out of doing this, he turns, stretching his arms out behind him to pop his stiff spine from being stuck in a healing pod for so long (he’s not sure if it’s actually been that long, but he’s running with how he feels). The Paladins all fall silent as they watch him shake his arms out, curling and uncurling his fingers with invisible energy thrumming through his core, warming his whole body, twisting and unfurling as he weakens the leash he holds around his power.

It hums at his gentle touch, coaxes his too-loud mind to soothing silence as he closes his eyes, wondering what exactly he should do to show the Paladins what he is before he can’t do any more. It has to be something that speaks without words, but won’t drain him too much.

Yes, he is aware he just got out of a pod. He’s not the one with mildly self-destructive tendencies –that’s Keith’s job, much as it gives Lance heart attacks every time Keith does something rash. He’s been warned about what happens when you exceed your limits, when you push too far, too hard, too fast. He’s seen others spend days, _weeks,_ even, bedridden as they recuperated from pushing themselves too hard.

Coupled with the pain he knows is coming, and the backlash from the ion canon he’s only just recovered from, he’s smart enough to realize he might do himself irreparable harm if he pushes himself far enough when the punishment disables him, he might not come back whole.

When he opens his eyes again he hears a sharp intake of breath, but he doesn’t look to see who it comes from. He knows what they’re seeing, what his eyes look like. When he uses his power, when he touches it and gathers up enough of it like he is doing now, his eyes burn amber, turn to molten gold, sun disks that glow bright enough to flash in the darkest nights. It’s the same for all his people.

Allie’s eyes are beautiful when she uses her power, like golden jewellery catching the light of the sun at just the right moment to blind you with its beauty. He closes his eyes again, focuses deep inside him, on the power that swirls restlessly, waiting for release, rather than the looks on his friends’ faces.

His eyes are golden now, just like his people, but his eyes aren’t beautiful like theirs are. His eyes have a line of black running through his pupil, a scar, a mark of the damned, burned into the pupils that show him to be tainted. Black like the disgusting sludge of oil that is the voices murmuring just beneath the thrum of power, waiting for it to get quiet enough for them to be heard.

He’s tainted, and he doesn’t want his friends to see that.

Half a second later, he feels a weight settle in his outstretched arms. It’s not the heaviest he’s ever lifted, but its close. For a second, he pauses, feeling its shape, the space it takes up, following its straight lines and curves. He smiles faintly. The couch, the long one that, thankfully, no one is sitting on. That’d be a bit much for him to move around. He can do it, but considering the pain he’s just waiting to feel, it’s better that he doesn’t.

His arms tremble as he forces his will on the weight, uses his arms to mimic the movement he wants it to follow. He is so centred on what he’s doing that he doesn’t know, can’t hear, can’t sense, any of the reactions from his friends, but he’s glad for that. He gets distracted too easily, something his trainer constantly lamented, and if he could see his friends’ faces now, he might end up putting the couch somewhere it shouldn’t. Like, say, on top of Keith’s head.

He smirks at that, the thought of Keith’s cute angry face enough to clear the depressive miasma clinging to him despite the wonderful giddiness coursing through him at releasing at least a bit of his power. He shakes his head a little to focus on what he’s doing when he feels the couch warble, just a little, but enough to tell him he should probably set it down now.

Then something tickles the back of his neck. He tenses instinctively as he feels something akin to a claw dragging across his tattoo, outlining it, following its curves and lines. He gulps nervously as he quickly returns to the couch, and tries to hold it steady as he lets it start its descent back to the floor.

Liquid heat trickles down his nose and over his upper lip before sliding down into his open mouth, and the taste of copper fills his tongue. His eyes blow wide open at that, surprise taking over. He’s never –he’s never had a nose bleed from using his power for something simple like this. _Never._

Something’s wrong.

He gives up all pretence and reins his power in abruptly, dropping the couch, opening his eyes and watching it fall the last foot to the ground. It thuds heavily as it lands, enough that he feels the reverberations through the floor travel up his body as he stares at the couch.

In the corner of his eye, he sees his team, his friends, jump when the couch lands, but he ignores them as he lifts a hand and wipes the back of it under his nose. Then he coughs, hard enough that he feels something wet and hot slap against his hand.

He stares at the red smear over the back of his hand. It looks so odd. He’s seen blood before, that’s not odd, but what’s weird is the realization that this is his blood. _His_ blood, from his nose and mouth, from _inside_ him, from using his power…in front of outsiders. From _intentionally_ using his powers in front of outsiders.

Shit.

His breath hitches as he feels a sharp stinging at the back of his neck, the fire of a white-hot brand pressing into his skin, right where his tattoo is. His hand comes up to slap against his neck as he hisses, breath shuttering out of his lungs when he feels a sharp pain digging in just under his ribs.

He sways, dizzy and nauseas where he stands as he turns to look at his friends, catching Keith’s astounded gaze. They all gape at him in astonishment that quickly gives way to concern when they see the blood dripping from his nose and from his mouth, down to his chin.

_Oh mier –_

Before the Paladins can do anything more than stare, Lance’s eyes roll up in his head as he falls to the ground when an overwhelming deluge of _pain_ washes over him, until all he knows is a world of never-ending hurt. It’s worse than what he went through before his brother took his place and died for it. It’s worse than when he shoved Coran out of the way and took the brunt of the impact from the exploding crystal during Sendak’s attack. It’s worse than getting hit directly by the ion canon infused with the corruption of Druidic magic.

**_:pain pain pain everywhere hurt make it stop MAKE IT STOP:_ **

It doesn’t stop. If anything, it gets worse.

Fire scorches his mind, chasing after the weak attempts at ice that Blue tries to send him when she senses the pure torment overcoming him, burning her comfort to cinders and ripping an agonized scream out of his throat. The fire engulfs him in mind, body, and spirit, and he knows, he _knows_ it is because what he’s done is forbidden, he’s broken _Law,_ he deserves it, he deserves the punishment.

Lance feels like his skeleton is vibrating under his skin, shifting and moving and breaking and digging the splintered edges into his lungs and tearing through them. He can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe,_ there’s nothing beyond the volcanic pain incinerating him, sweeping him under and drowning him in boiling lava.

Blood leaks out from his ears, dribbles down his nose, weeps from the cracks of his eyes shut tight. His tattoo glows, so bright that it’s impossible not to notice the shafts of light beaming from under the collar of Lance’s favourite jacket.

It’s the source of his agony, and all he wants is to rip it off, tear it from his skin, _anything_ to escape the pain.

Through the fire, he feels hands touching him, both cooling his skin and making it crawl in sensitivity as the hands lift him up, cradling him against a firm chest. He catches his team, his friends, his family, shouting frantically at each other.

“Fuck, what’s go –on –” is that Shiro? _Swearing?_

“Lance!” and Keith?

“This isn’t –” Allura, right?

“–ance is –” Hunk.

“–I don’t –seiz –” Pidge.

“LANCE!” Keith.

“–pod rig –n –h –ickly!” Coran.

“But he sa –” Pidge?

_“LANCE!”_

Keith.

↭§↭

He comes to blearily blinking and squinting at the too-bright lights of the med-bay’s ceiling.

Every part of him aches. His skeleton feels like it’s been scrubbed down by emery paper, his muscles are heavy and lethargic as his aching eyes slowly adjust to the lights. His nose feels clogged, and his eardrums hurt, like someone poked needles into them. His head is the worst, a migraine throbbing in-tune with his heartbeat.

Almost instantly, Blue’s presence swims around him, wrapping him up in a cool sensation that doesn’t hurt. It soothes his confused mind, settles him down as Blue purrs around him. They exchange a flow of emotions without needing to use words, Blue asking him what happened, why did he hurt so much, _who_ hurt him, Lance explaining to her that he showed everyone what he is, and that was just what happens when his people reveal themselves to outsiders. Blue grumbles irritably at that, immensely displeased that Lance had to suffer and she couldn’t do anything to help him.

Lance remains like that for a long time, eventually closing his eyes and trying to remember what happened, with Blue’s help. He was in her cockpit, unresponsive except for the quiet touch of her mind to his to reassure him that she was okay, and to thank him for shielding her, and then to scold him for taking the brunt of those impacts on his smaller body.

He remembers his dreams while he was in the healing pod, reliving memories he wishes he could bury under a mountain of snow, to keep them as far away from himself as possible. He remembers the fight with his friends, the disappointed looks they gave him, the way the voices incessantly reminded him that they could always find another, better Paladin for Blue all throughout the fight that landed him in the healing pod.

He remembers thinking that this fight they’re in is bigger than him, bigger than all of them. They’re not just fighting to free and protect other planets and galaxies from Zarkon’s evil, but they’re own home, Earth, too. Because if Zarkon or Haggar find out where the Paladins’ call home, there is no guarantee that they won’t attack Earth in retaliation for Voltron’s continued fight against the Galran Empire.

And no matter what his family might try to say in argument against that, what they and his people are facing now, what he ran away from, what his brother died protecting him from, that is nothing compared to the destruction Zarkon will rain down on the entire planet in revenge for Voltron’s fight against him.

He remembers deciding that even if revealing his secret ended up killing him, it would be okay. The voices are right in one thing; he’s replaceable. The others, they matter, they have skills that are needed. Him? He doesn’t have a thing. He’s expendable.

He opens his eyes again, groaning a little at how bright the lights still feel. He tries to lift a hand to cover his eyes, but something, wires maybe, pull at the inside of his elbow. He frowns. Now that he thinks about it, he feels something sticking to his temples as well. It’s cold. He glances down and sees –wait, why the heck are there electrolytes stuck on him?

Oh. Wait. That’s right. He told them not to put him in a healing pod.

“Lance?” a voice whispers quietly, somewhere to his right. “Are you awake?”

He blinks in surprise and turns his head to the right, to find himself looking straight into those violet eyes. Keith is sitting in a chair he must have pulled up right next to the bed Lance lays on. Dark circles rest under his eyes, his hair a crow’s nest, cheek still carrying the faint imprint of his jacket. Keith is naturally pale, but now he looks almost sickly, skin ashen and definitely in need of some moisturizing.

“Uh,” his voice is a little hoarse, but not quite as bad as it was after the whole ion canon shenanigan. “I hope so, because you’re not supposed to be in my heaven.”

Keith doesn’t look impressed at the quip, or even mildly disgruntled. He doesn’t actually look much of anything, beyond struck speechless. He just stares at Lance. He doesn’t look like he knows what to say, or do, so he just goes with the easiest –and most awkward –route; staring. Because that’s always the best way to go (note sarcasm).

Lance winces as he gingerly pushes himself up, sitting and slouching as the sheer effort of just sitting wears him out almost instantly. Keith leans back to give him space, then rises from his seat, chair squeaking on the floor as he stands and just continues staring at Lance wordlessly.

Lance looks down and picks at the wiring connected to the electrolyte slapped on his elbow. He stares at the white scars decorating the insides of his wrists, exposed because he’s wearing a plain white shirt that only reaches just above his elbows, coupled with matching white trousers. He swallows and turns his wrists down, so that they’re touching the cool surface of the bed.

He follows the wires up to a machine they’re connected to that stands at the head of the bed he’s on. It looks like some kind of Altean version of a heart monitor. He watches the blue squiggly lines that go up and down at regular intervals before flat-lining, then going up and down again. Nothing seems too worrisome, so he turns back to the still-looking-shell-shocked-as-hell Keith.

“What happened?” he asks quietly. Keith blinks at him, roused out of his daze at the sound of Lance’s voice.

“You –you stopped breathing,” Keith says, and it sounds like there’s something stuck in his throat. His eyes glimmer, shining too bright. Distantly, Lance realizes that those are tears, _tears,_ in Keith’s eyes, but all he can think is that it looks like there are stars going supernova in those violet twins. Beautiful, deadly, but still so beautiful. “Your heart stopped and –and no one knew what to do –Lance, why the hell would you tell us not to put you in a healing pod?”

He chuckles sadly. “I wouldn’t have healed in there, duh.”

An unfortunate circumstance. The few times he’s overexerted himself or drained his power reserves and tried to hop into a healing pod to fix it, the pod just hummed around him, obviously _trying_ to heal him, but just…not.

 _“Not_ duh!” Keith snaps, livid. Is it just Lance, or is there an Irish roll to the words buried underneath the clear worry and concern and anger all clashing together into one big, giant, Red Paladin mess? “No one knew what to _do,_ Lance! You lift a freakin’ couch _without touching it,_ your eyes go Merlin on us –”

“You’ve watched Merlin?” Lance squeaks, surprises.

Keith scowls furiously at him and ploughs on like Lance didn’t even speak. “And then you just –you just _scream_ and your tattoo’s glowing and the skin around it is burning and there’s blood everywhere, and –and I thought you were – I thought you were gonna leave and –just –”

Yeah, Lance needs to do something. Like, right now. Keith looks like he’s about to send himself into an early grave via cardiac arrest, face red (not in the cute blushing way), eyes wide with fright, spluttering and trying to speak but struggling to find the words to do so.

Before he can think twice about it, he reaches out and wraps his arms around Keith’s shoulders, pulling him closer to hug him properly. He feels Keith stiffen at first, remaining that way for a few long seconds, like he thinks Lance is about to stab him or something. Then he loosens, bit by bit, until he winds his arms around Lance’s waist and presses his face to Lance’s shoulder.

“I’m okay, Keith,” he maunders. “I’m fine, I’m right here, Keith. I’m not going anywhere.”

He wonders if he can maybe run his hands through Keith’s hair to soothe him, just like he would whenever little Mattie or Andrea were upset (and Allie, too, except that one time she freaking _bit_ him because she was still pissed at some stupid thing he did). But, judging by Keith’s initial reaction, he’s clearly not used to random hugs, maybe even just simple touches.

So Lance simply tightens his hold around Keith, smiling softly when Keith reciprocates and presses closer.

“I thought you were leaving,” Keith’s voice is muffled by Lance’s shoulder, but it’s close to his ear, so he can hear. The words don’t really make sense, but Lance doesn’t say anything yet. “I thought –I thought you were leaving.”

It occurs to Lance, only now, that he doesn’t actually _know_ Keith. Like, he knows the Keith _now,_ but he doesn’t know much –anything, actually –of Keith’s past, what happened to him to make him the person he is today. Right now, the Keith he sees is a product of those things in his past, but he doesn’t know what those things are. All he knows of Keith is what he’s seen since Garrison days, and now fighting together against Zarkon.

He knows that Keith has a ridiculously short temper.

That he can (probably unknowingly) flirt in random bursts that completely (and unfairly) catch Lance off-guard.

That he trains whenever he feels stressed, or when he’s confused, or just basically when he’s hit with an emotion that isn’t anger or bland interest and doesn’t know what to do with it.

That he really likes Hunk’s cooking but doesn’t go for seconds (and thirds) until someone else does (Lance).

That his hair gets insanely frizzy in places with high humidity (frizzy hair isn’t supposed to look cute).

That he sees Shiro as a brother figure –

Lance’s eyes widen a little. Holy quiznack. Shiro is like Keith’s older brother –and Shiro was missing for over a year after the failed Kerberos mission, enslaved by the Galra and forced to fight in the arena as a gladiator just to survive. Except, Keith didn’t know Shiro was with the Galra. He thought Shiro died.

_He thought Shiro left him._

In hindsight, Lance now realizes that he should have gone about his big reveal in a better, less traumatizing way. But honestly, however he did it, it would be shocking anyways. If not for everyone else, then definitely for him. In fact, in every possible scenario he can come up with, his suffering through that indescribable pain is a guarantee, bedrock on which everything else rests.

“I’m not going anywhere, mullet. I promise.” He adds, trying to inject as much conviction as he can into his voice. A moment later, he feels something wet touch his shoulder, but he doesn’t move, and neither does Keith. He chuckles lightly, trying to instil some humour in this way-too-depressive situation. “In fact, pretty soon you’re gonna get sick of me, I guarantee it.”

“I won’t,” Keith mutters, so quiet that Lance wonders if he’s hallucinated it. Then, more firmly, “I _won’t.”_

He did not hallucinate that.

Lance blinks, suppresses an inward groan at the stupid Red Paladin and the stupid _feelings_ swirling in his chest at Keith’s obliviousness (to be fair, Lance is doing a good job of keeping those _feelings_ invisible to a certain violet-eyed boy), and drops his head so his forehead rests on Keith’s shoulder.

Quiznack, what is he going to do with this boy?

For a surprisingly comfortable amount of time, the two simply stay like that. Lance on the med-bay’s bed, hugging Keith, whose arms are wrapped around Lance’s waist, face hidden in his shoulder. Lance doesn’t comment on the growing wet patch on his shoulder.

After a second of hesitation, he puts his hand up and cups the back of Keith’s head, only letting his fingers run through the silken strands for a brief moment before he pats Keith’s hair up and down the way he does for his younger siblings when they’re upset. When Keith doesn’t try to push him away he figures he’s doing something right, at least.

“What the hell was that, Lance?” Keith manages to say, hand curling into a fist in the material of the light beige bodysuit Lance is wearing. “We thought you were _dying.”_

Lance winces. To be honest, he was about forty percent sure he’d die, too.

Okay, maybe make that fifty.

…eighty?

He sighs heavily, knowing he’s going to have to get this done eventually. He’d rather do it sooner than later, so that he can spend that later either devouring a truckload of whatever he can convince Hunk to cook for him, or sleep away the rest of eternity.

↭§↭

Once Keith composes himself (and pulls a promise out of Lance to both never speak of his mini breakdown and never reveal it to anyone else that it happened, especially Pidge), he uses the Castle’s overhead speakers to tell everyone that Lance is awake and wants to talk to them. The team congregate in the common room they use most often, the one close to the kitchen, their dorm-esque rooms, and the bridge.

The first thing Hunk does when he sees Lance, leaning heavily (trying not to, but he’s still a little weak from the double-whammy of bodily blocking an ion canon and revealing his secret to them) on Keith, is march right over to him and pick him up in a hug that Lance half-fears will literally break his body, but turns out to be the gentlest hug Hunk’s ever given him (of which there are many). Lance feels tears pricking the corners of his eyes, but he doesn’t say anything as he lets go of Keith to wrap his arms around Hunk’s shoulders, hugging him back.

Then Pidge walks up to him. She looks at him for a long time, with such an intent gaze that Lance wonders if he’ll be burned alive if she were pyrokinetic, or something of the like. Then, quite unexpectedly, she hugs him too, though hers is more of wrapping herself around him like a literal koala and absolutely refusing to let go, even when Shiro comes over and gives him a hug too, saying how glad he is that Lance is okay.

Coran comes next, and even Allura hugs him tight, though Lance wonders how they manage it with Pidge still refusing to let him go, as if she thinks he’ll drop dead at her feet if she does. By the end of the hugging and telling Lance how relieved they are that he’s feeling well enough to be up and about (and the quiet crying of relief from Hunk), they settle on the couches, Hunk and Pidge flanking him on either side, with Keith on Pidge’s side. Shiro, Allura, and Coran sit on the couch opposite the younger Paladins.

When Lance glances at the floor, he’s glad to see that the Castle’s cleaning system at least got rid of whatever blood he might have left when he passed out. He’s starting to think he’s developing a nauseas hatred of seeing blood.

Lance leans against Hunk’s side, trying to mask it as seeking the solid comfort of his best friend, but the truth is that he’s not sure he can manage to sit up on his own for as long as he figures this whole explanation thing is going to take. He feels better, definitely. His power is back in control, and rustling comfortably inside him, happy at being known, acknowledged. But his body is still weak, and he needs to sit through this and _talk,_ after everything he pulled to get here.

He really hopes he doesn’t fall asleep halfway through. That’d be inconvenient, to have to do this twice.

“I’m almost scared to ask you what happened back there, buddy,” Hunk starts, so quiet, but the common room is silent, the only sound being that of his friends’ breathing. Hunk’s voice echoes loud in the silence, bouncing off the walls, breaking the blanket of tension that’s fallen over the team as they wait.

“Right, right,” Lance nods, he nods, toying with his jacket sleeves, resisting the urge to itch at the insides of his wrists. “But, um, before that, uh –how long was I out?” not that it matters, but he just wants to know, for curiosity’s sake.

Also, if he ever gets back home and sees Allie again, she’ll kill him for not finding out how long he was unconscious after breaking his Seal. Whoever said curiosity kills the cat got it wrong –if Allie’s the cat, it’s the other way round.

“Three days.” Shiro answers. His eyes rove over Lance’s form huddled beside Hunk’s blessed warmth, as if he’s searching for any more visible injury, any sign that he needs to go back into a pod.

Lance hums at the back of his throat, mumbling to himself, “Huh, not so bad.”

He’s heard of some people stuck in a coma for weeks after telling someone –granted, that in itself is rare enough. There’s a reason his people have that Law in the first place, why they let their children get the tattoos in the first place at the tender age of seven.

 _“Not so bad?”_ Pidge repeats and –oh no.

If he thought an angry Keith is hard to deal with, Past Lance should get a load of Angry Pidge. Or maybe, just, not make her angry at all. That’s always the safest route, for all parties involved. Her eyes are positively _blazing,_ and she’s vibrating with so much anger in her little form that Lance is actually a little worried she’s about to re-enact Keith’s near cardiac arrest act from barely an hour ago.

“Not so fucking _bad?”_ she shrieks. Shiro doesn’t bother reprimanding her for her language. He might be Space Dad, but Angry Pidge terrifies even him. “Lance, do you have _any idea_ what the hell just _happened?”_

“Nose bleed, ruptured eardrums, epileptic-type seizure, heart failure, glowing tattoo,” he taps the back of his neck, which is still sensitive around the burned edges. He decides not to do that again. “And coma. Yeah, I have a pretty good idea.”

Pidge looks a little thrown at how easily his rattles off what he went through, as if he’s ticking items of a grocery list. To be honest, he is ticking items. Those are all common side-effects of the Seal being broken, and considering it’s a freaking binding spell that’s put in place when you are a child, it’s _supposed_ to hurt. A lot. The thing isn’t meant to be broken, ever, and there’s ahella lot of warnings that are supposed to kick in before you have a chance to speak.

Doesn’t mean Lance is eager to repeat the process just to see if it’s common that his tattoo is now azure blue instead of the normal black, though, something he noticed in the mirror of his bathroom when Keith helped him back to his room to put on his jacket and wash his face.

“I admit I could have gone about this better, but…actually…um…” Lance frowns as he drops his gaze to where he’s absently picking at the hem of his jack, sorting through the confusion in his mind.

Dammit, this is harder than he thought it’d be, okay?

Now that he’s _here,_ actually able to speak the words and know that he won’t face some painful repercussion for it, he has no idea how to actually _do_ it. He’s never been in a position where he can –and kind of has to –just come out and _say_ what he is.

“Lance,” Shiro says gently, almost like he’s talking to a scared animal. “Would it be easier if we asked questions and you answered? Or do you need some time to figure it out?”

“Uh.” He thinks about it for a second, deciding Shiro’s suggestion is actually a good idea. “I think just, ask me questions and I’ll answer.” _What I can, at least._

“I’m going first.” Pidge says firmly. She looks around at them, making eye contact with everyone, daring them to challenge her. No one does, wisely.

“Okay, Pidgey,” Lance acquiesces, settling in more comfortably next to Hunk. “Shoot.”

Lance wonders if he’s seeing things when Pidge sits forward eagerly and her glasses catch a stray shard of light, flashing, as if she’s some kind of badass anime megane-kun. “Good. First of all, what happened?”

Of course she’s going to start off with the hard stuff. This is Pidge, who was he kidding.

“That was my Seal breaking.” Pidge waves a hand to continue. He sighs. “So, first off, you should know that I’m not exactly a ’normal’ human. I mean, I’m human, definitely, I think I’d know if I wasn’t like furry Keithy here –”

“I’m not a furry.”

“Not yet you’re not,” he winks at Keith, who grunts, crosses his arms, and looks away. The perfect picture of an emo edgelord. Lance turns back to Pidge and continues. “So, yeah, I’m human, but not exactly…’normal’.” He ends lamely.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Allura asks, frowning in confusion. “What constitutes as a ‘normal human’?”

“Yes, what does ‘normal’ mean for you?” Coran mumbles, perturbed. “I thought you were all the basis of normal.”

“Normal humans don’t move things around without touching them.” Keith answers bluntly.

“Not to mince words, but yes, Princess,” Shiro nods in agreement. “Humans are more mundane than that. We build machines to move things around like that. You’d have to be exceptionally strong to do it with your bare hands and, as far as I know, no human can lift a couch without physically touching it.”

“Except if you’re in the Guinness World Book of Records,” Hunk adds. Lance snorts at that. Hunk wouldn’t be saying that if he’d met Lance’s Tía Marina.

“Ah, I see.” Allura mumbles, tapping a finger to her chin as she looks at Lance with distinctly clinical interest that has him squirming on the inside in discomfort.

“Yeap, mundane, nice word, Shiro,” Lance says. “I am human, but I’m not, like, a strictly normal human in comparison to what normal humans are like. Neither’s my family, or, um. My people.”

Hunk gives him a funny look. “My people?”

“Yeah. We, uh,” Lance looks down, fiddling with the hem of his jacket. “We call ourselves Witches.”

Pin. Drop. Silence.

In it, Lance can actually hear the Castle humming as its systems run in the background, the faint buzz of the lights keeping everything illuminated. It’s not as if the Castle doesn’t get this quiet sometimes, considering there’s only seven people to fill its gargantuan space, but it’s never like this. With everyone gathered together, within arm distance, yet so quiet it’s like no one’s even here.

Except, of course they’re here, because _they’re all staring at him_ and he doesn’t like it. Lance loves attention, he thrives on it, but…not like this.

Keith is the first to break it. “Witches? As in…broomsticks and pointy hats?”

Lance shoots him a frown. “No, that’s Hollywood, and demeaning as hell.” He shakes his head. “No, uh, Witches, my people, we’re more like a branch of humans that…I guess you can say we developed the ability to sense and use magic a couple thousand years ago. From there we just grew into communities and learned more about what we can do.”

That’s putting it simply, but Lance decides the team doesn’t need to be hit with everything about Witches and his world all at once. They’ll know soon enough, anyways, considering he’s revealing all this to them in the first place.

“Your whole family are Witches?” Shiro asks.

“Yeah, all of ’em. One or two are born without any powers, that’s not uncommon, but they’re still part of things, helping out with keeping knowledge and passing it down the generations.”

“How many of these Witches are there?” Allura asks curiously.

“Uh, at home in Cuba? Like, a few hundred. Maybe one, or two hundred?” He frowns thoughtfully. “Not really sure about specific statistics.” Allie would probably know. She likes to know these kind of things, just for the sake of knowing.

“What about worldwide?” Keith asks, sitting forward and looking just as intensely interested at what Lance is saying as he does when they’re all planning a mission. Lance feels oddly flattered by _that_ attention, at least.

“A couple thousand.” He frowns, trying to remember. “I think close to half a million, actually. We’re scattered all over Earth. There’s always enough of us in one place that every once in a while we gather up to hang out and share ideas and other stuff.” He’s not about to get into _what,_ exactly, Witches do. It’s not something he’s proud of.

“Witchy stuff?” Hunk smiles.

Lance grins. That’s good enough. “Witchy stuff.”

“Do you sacrifice babies?” Pidge asks.

Lance gives her a flat glare. “No.”

“Virgins?”

“Hell no.”

“Do you summon demons from actual hell?” she gasps. “Oh my god, is hell _real?”_

Lance tries very hard not to visibly flinch at the mention of demons. There are a lot of things he definitely does plan on telling his friends (at some point) but demons…yeah, that’s a little too much, too soon, too close to home.

“Pidge, being a Witch is not any of that Hollywood bull –” he cuts himself off just in time to catch Shiro’s warning look. Near-death experience or no, swearing is still off the books. Which he finds funny because he vaguely recalls hearing Shiro say ‘fuck’. He coughs. “It’s not any of that stuff you see in movies and TV shows. Real Witches are more like…okay, not to sound hippie –”

“Whatever you say will definitely sound hippie,” Pidge decides.

He valiantly ignores her. “–But we’re more in-tune with nature than we are interested in sacrificing virgins and goats.”

Pidge snaps her fingers. “Called it.”

Hunk wrinkles his nose. “Goats?”

“Trust me, Hunk, you don’t want to know some of the rumours of I’ve heard people saying about what they think we do.” He shrugs. “And even those Witches who aren’t into growing things use their powers for other things that do not include building bonfires and dancing for Satan.” He adds when he catches Pidge opening her mouth to fire off that question exactly.

But she’s still ready with another question. Honestly, Lance thinks she’s just a mine full of questions. “So what about this ‘Seal’ breaking? What exactly _is_ a Seal?”

Lance reaches back and very, _very_ gently taps the tattoo on his neck, which prickles in response to the touch. “When Witch children turn seven, we get a tattoo that’s typically the sigil of our families. Only orphan Witches get to choose what tattoo they get, and they’re rare because Witches are a close-knit community. We might not all be blood relatives, but we’re pretty much like a really big family.”

“Why didn’t you want to go in a healing pod, though?” Hunk asks. “We were really worried, man. You were seizing and then we didn’t know if we should stick you in a pod or not, because you said not to and we had no idea why and how you’d even know not to put you in one.” He swallows, face pale. “You stopped breathing, man.”

“Uh,” Lance scratches the back of his neck, or tries to, wincing when a sharp pain spikes at the contact. He quickly drops his hand. “I don’t think the healing pods work on any injury I get through magical means.”

“Magical –” Shiro cuts himself off and shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Lance looks on sympathetically. Honestly, everyone’s handling this quite a bit better than he thought they would. No one’s obviously freaking out or anything. They’re just asking questions, looking more than a little surprised and shocked, sure, but not freaking out. That’s a step in the right direction.

Although, he figures the whole not-freaking-out thing might be on account of the fact that they are in space, fighting an intergalactic war against a race of evil purple furries that are over seven feet tall and do not know how to chill, in giant robots that are built like lions and definitely more than just sentient machines.

“Really?” Hunk asks, surprised.

He nods. “Yeah. A couple times when I…” Lance hesitates for brief moment, wondering if he should be saying this, wondering if they’ll try to get more out of him if he does. He decides to try going for it quickly in the hopes it’ll just fly over their heads in light of the fact that he is a magical being they had no clue about for as long as they’ve known him. “A couple times when I practiced with my powers and got hurt, I’d go in the pod but nothing happened. Like, they’d let me out a few minutes after I go in with some kind of orange alert or something.”

“That must be the healing pod’s error message,” Coran strokes his moustache thoughtfully. “Hm, I’m going to have to look into that. Maybe if I could recalibrate the flow of quintessence in the hydraulics chambers to take into account your magical capabilities…”

Lance zones out at that. At this point, it’s an automatic reaction to register Coran’s muttering to himself about quintessence levels this, biophysical that, without actually hearing a word of what the Altean’s saying. Instead, Lance focuses on the rest of the team, looking to Shiro when the Black Paladin leans forward a little.

“So, your tattoo is your family’s sigil?” Shiro questions.

Lance nods, and thanks the gods the team don’t know enough about Witches and his family to question more about that shape of the tattoo. He doesn’t want his friends treating him any more differently than they already will just because of _who_ his family are to the world of Witches. “Yeah. It’s another way Witches can identify what family clan we’re from.”

“How is it a Seal?”

“Right, about that. So, these tattoos are spelled to become Seals, which is what warns and prevents us from telling outsiders that we are Witches. It can be broken and, like you guys saw, it’s incredibly painful, and we’re knocked out for a while afterward, but it’s not life-threatening or anything. Once the Seal’s broken, we’re free to tell anyone we want about what we are, without facing any of the repercussions from the Seal. That’s how I can talk to you guys about it now.”

“But you did not actually _tell_ us,” Allura interjects, twirling a strand of silver hair between her fingers contemplatively. “You showed us what you can do. Is that not some sort of loophole that you managed to exploit?”

Lance shakes his head. “There’re literally no loopholes with Seals. Witches have had over four hundred years to perfect it. It takes three things to break a Seal. One,” he lifts three fingers and drops one. “Is intent. The second,” he drops another finger. “Is the will to act on the intention. The third is the act of intention itself. It doesn’t matter how you go about the third, whether you use words to do it, or write it down, or actually show an outsider what you are.”

“What about if someone accidentally sees a Witch doing it?” Hunk asks. “I mean, do you still go through that? And what if it’s multiple Witches that are seen? It’s not like you had the intent or the will to act on the intention, right?”

Lance nods. “Right you are, buddy. If an outsider sees a Witch doing it, and that Witch had no intention of revealing themselves, the Seal recognizes that. Then all it does is wipes the outsider’s memory of the event, and boom, secret safe.”

Keith frowns, obviously displeased. “Wait, are you saying that if any of us saw you doing something, but you didn’t actually _want_ to tell us, we wouldn’t remember?”

Lance nods again in affirmation, understanding why Keith wouldn’t like that –why anyone wouldn’t like it. Who’d want to have their minds toyed with and then not even _remember_ it happening?

“Yeah. It’s not something I can control, either. The Seal is the one thing about being a Witch that none of us can actually control, beyond breaking it.”

“Have we?” Pidge asks. “Like, have any of us seen you do something before and we just don’t remember it? And what about Allura and Coran?” she gestures at the two, Coran having pulled his tablet out and tapping quickly at it. Lance is pretty sure he’s still thinking about healing pods and how they’re affected by Lance’s magic. “Would the Seal work on Alteans, or just like, any aliens?” she frowns darkly. “Did the Xyphelians know? How come the Seal didn’t break then?”

“Doubtful,” Allura shakes her head. “The Xyphelians can detect when there are secrets being held, but not _what_ those secrets are.”

Lance shrugs. “I have no idea if it works on aliens. I mean, Blue knows, but nothing’s ever happened to her?” she nudges him gently, proud of him for talking about this to his space family. He smiles gently before turning back to his friends. “But I don’t know if she counts ’cause she’s, y’know, a beautiful robotic lion.” They chuckle a little at that, and Lance smiles. “And no, as far as I know, none of you have seen anything before now. I don’t –I don’t like messing with people like that, even if they won’t remember it. I was careful to make sure no one saw anything.”

There were a few close calls, though. The biggest red herring that Lance is faintly amused no one has questioned about is way, way at the beginning of this whole saving-the-universe thing, when Blue unwittingly used some of his magic to wake up what little she could use of her own quintessence to power up the wormhole that got them to Arus and the Castle.

“So what kind of powers do you have?” Pidge, asks. This time, Lance is sure he’s not mistaking the flash of her glasses. Pidge is scary. “Can you fly?”

“No. Flying’s, like –well, there are Witches who _can_ fly, but I can’t. I prefer the safety of glowing controls within easy reach and a leather seat that can eject me with a parachute at my back, thanks.”

“Yeah, that does seem a little safer.” Hunk agrees. He looks a little queasy at the thought of flying outside of his Lion or some other giant metal structure capable of flight.

“Right you are, big guy. What I do is mostly just psychokinetic stuff.” At least, he’s pretty sure that’s the word Allie used when they were studying for their tests about magical knowledge.

“Holy crap,” Pidge breathes, eyes saucer-wide behind the lenses of her glasses. “The power to move something by thinking about it without the application of physical force.” She snaps her fingers. “That’s how you moved the couch!”

Is Pidge an encyclopaedia?

He nods, shaking the thought off. “Yeap.” He answers, popping the ‘p’.

“What else can you move?” Keith asks, curious despite himself.

“I’d probably lift you up to the ceiling right now, but I’m not at a hundred percent yet.” He winks. “Next time, though.”

“Who says I want to go to the ceiling?”

“Oh, is there somewhere else you wanna do this?” Lance asks, lifting an eyebrow and positively _purring_ at Keith, Blue doing the equivalent of a chuckle in his mind.

“Okay, okay, your horrific flirting can take a backseat,” Pidge looks disgusted at Lance’s low-key innuendo as she crosses her legs and plants her elbows on her knees as she steeples her fingers. “What else can you do? Is it only psychokinesis, or like a bunch of random things while psychokinesis is the predominant ability?”

It only takes a few seconds for Lance to contemplate the pros and cons of blinking when he is, as said, not at a hundred percent. Then again, blinking’s the most basic ability for any Witch to have. Even a five-year-old can blink from one end of a room to the other.

More like one end of a bed to the other, but eh. Technicalities.

Lance closes his eyes and thinks about where he wants to go. He’s already sitting next to Hunk, curled up against the big teddy bear’s side. Allura and Coran are both sitting on the edge of the large low-legged table in the centre of the U-shape the three couches make, and he’s not entirely sure if that table can take his weight as well as the Alteans.

He doesn’t think it’s a good idea to suddenly pop up next to Shiro or, gods forbid, behind him, mostly because Shiro spent an entire year imprisoned by the Galra, and he has to deal with flashbacks from his PTSD because of it. And while Pidge is small, her excitement could get the better of her and he might end up getting tased by her bayard just because she wanted to see if electricity affects his blinking.

Only one option left.

When he opens his eyes after he feels himself steady from the sharp dip his stomach takes when he blinks, Lance is sitting next to Keith, a sharp grin on his face as he stretches his legs out on the couch and very casually leans heavily on Keith’s side.

“What –” Keith yelps in surprise and whirls around, just barely catching them as he falls to the side from the surprise weight. Lance lands with his head on Keith’s stomach, Keith himself sprawled on his back on the couch. Lance _feels_ his huff of surprise in the rise and fall of his abdomen.

“Teleportation? Seriously, you can do that?” Pidge half-screeches.

“Not exact –wait, no, Pidge!”

She ignores him as she launches herself at Lance, who throws his arms up to protect himself but he doesn’t quite manage it when she koala-wraps herself around his torso and props her chin on her hands, knobby elbows digging into his stomach, but not hard enough to actually hurt. He laughs at her before reaching over and ruffling her messy amber hair. She just ducks her head and smacks his hand away before looking up at him.

“C’mon, Lance, tell me! I want to know!”

“And maybe get off me in the process?” Keith asks, his voice coming from somewhere above Lance’s head.

He hums, lacing his fingers together and resting them over his head as he closes his eyes, still smiling. He doesn’t move, surprisingly quite comfortable right where he is. That may or may not be because he can feel Keith’s abs. And despite blinking being basic as hell, it still took more out of him than he thought it would. He’s just catching his breath.

Also, Keith hasn’t stabbed him yet. That’s always a good sign.

“Okay, so, that’s not really teleportation.” He answers Pidge, pointedly ignoring Keith’s request by wriggling a little to get more comfortable. “We call that blinking. Every Witch can blink, it’s like, pre-school stuff. Teleportation is more like thinking of where you want to go and then just getting there, while blinking’s more short-distance. You have to actually physically see where you want to go when you blink.”

“So you can’t teleport?”

“I can, but it takes a lot more juice.”

“How far can you go?”

“Farthest I’ve ever tried is from Havana to Miami. That didn’t go well, by the way.” Fainting in the middle of a strange American city when you’re still learning English is not fun. “My Mami grounded me for a month after that.”

And Allie laughed her ass off that entire month, much to his disgruntlement.

“Holy _shit,”_ Pidge breathes, eyes wide with awe and curiosity, blatantly ignoring Shiro’s quiet groan at her words. “That’s _incredible.”_

“It is, buddy,” Hunk agrees. He looks solemn, though. “And, I mean, I get why you couldn’t tell us, but it’s really cool what you can do. And, uh,” he rubs the back of his head. “Sorry.”

Lance turns his head, comfortably pillowed on Keith’s firm abdomen, and gives him a dumb look. “Sorry?”

“I’m sorry, too, Lance.” Shiro adds, unexpectedly contrite. Without warning, but prompted by Shiro, the rest of the Paladins murmur quiet apologies, one after the other. Lance just stares at them in utter confusion. Catching Lance’s baffled expression, Shiro continues. “We pushed you to reveal something that caused you pain to do so, and we should have taken into consideration that there’s a reason you haven’t told us any of this until now.”

“I, too, should apologize.” Allura says. Lance doubts his eyes can get any bigger than they do when she speaks. “I prioritized getting this alliance with the Xyphelians over the well-being of a Paladin, something I never should have done.”

Lance sits up quickly, ignoring the wave of dizziness and the little black spots in the corners of his eyes at the sudden move. Keith follows suit next to him as Pidge shuffles back so she’s sitting on Lance’s other side. If Keith notices him leaning a little more than usual, he doesn’t mention it.

“Guys, please, you don’t need to apologize.”

“Yes, we do.” Pidge insists.

“Come on, it’s not –”

“The Princess and Shiro are right, Lance,” Coran steps in. “I think it’s perhaps to do with how little we know about the existence of Witches on your planet, so none of us could have imagined that this was your secret, but we still should have taken into account that you were keeping it from us for good reason.”

“But we needed the alliance!” Lance protests. “I mean, it wasn’t fun, but now we can go back and get written agreement that the Xyphelians will join the Coalition. So it’s all good in the end, there’s no need to feel bad.”

“At what expense, though?” Shiro asks, looking at the table with a sadness in his eyes that Lance doesn’t like. At all. He hates seeing Shiro sad –anyone sad. He couldn’t even handle it when Keith was sad. “What if breaking the Seal had had more adverse effects?”

“They weren’t _that_ bad –”

“You had symptoms of a brain aneurysm, Lance.” Allura points out. “Your heart stopped beating for seventy ticks. In no way is that ‘not bad’.”

Lance slumps a little in his seat. He hadn’t known about his heart stopping. “Look, I know it must’ve looked really bad, I’m not saying it didn’t. But I wasn’t going to just drop dead, you know.” Except for that forty to sixty percent chance, which actually included his heart stopping for a few minutes. Yikes, no wonder he feels like he’s been through a meat grinder. “That’s not what Seals do. They’re just –they’re our protection, and a warning, to remind us of what happens when we tell the wrong people about what we are.”

“Why do you keep yourselves a secret, though?” Pidge asks curiously. “I mean, I get that regular humans would probably, I don’t know, try to experiment on Witches or something –”

“Pidge, I think you hacked into too many government websites.” Hunk chides gently.

“Wait, what?” Shiro asks, concerned. “You did what?”

Pidge gives him a look. “Do you really think my genius stops at hacking into the Garrison’s computer systems to fake my medical records and get me enrolled as Pidge Gunderson when I’m actually Katie Holt?”

“But that’s illegal, Pidge,” he argues.

She gives him a frank stare. “And.”

Keith shrugs, shoulders brushing Lance’s. “She’s got a point there.”

Shiro doesn’t look like he even knows how to respond to Pidge’s blatant disregard of governmental regulation. He simply shakes his head and waves a hand for her to continue her questioning.

“Okay, so, why is breaking the Seal so painful? What if you wanted to tell someone you know won’t rat you out for being a Witch?” she pauses, pursing her lips. “We thought –we thought you were dying, Lance.”

He ducks his head, looking back at the frayed end of his jacket he keeps playing with. “It never ends well when we reveal ourselves.” He mumbles. “We started using Seals after the Salem witch trials, after the rest of us saw what happened to the American Witches.”

Allura frowns in confusion. “Salem witch trials? What were those?”

When Lance doesn’t immediately reply, Pidge steps up for him. “They were part of this bullshit –”

“Pidge.”

She rolls her eyes. “They were part of this _crackpot,”_ she says pointedly. “Inquisition led by a strong religious faction that was pretty much worldwide by that point. Kind of. Basically, if some hooded figure pointed at a woman who helped cure diseases and illnesses with herbal medicine, or a woman who helped nurse a baby back to health after almost dying during childbirth, everyone would suddenly believe they were witches, that they were some kind of servants of Satan, who’s the big bad guy of that religion. Then those women would be forced to do these tests designed to make them fail, they’d be condemned as ‘heretical witches’ and burned at the stake, if they weren’t already dead from the tests.”

By the end of Pidge’s explanation, Allura and Coran are gaping in revulsion while the rest of the human team look down in varying degrees of muteness.

“But that’s –that’s _horrific!”_ Allura exclaims.

“Barbaric,” Coran adds, shaking his head sorrowfully.

Pidge nods. “Yeah, well. Humans don’t really have a great track record when religion comes into political power.”

“Yeah,” Hunk mumbles, shuddering. “The things humans have done in the name of faith, or God, or anything, really…not cool.”

Pidge nods, then frowns as she turns back to Lance, who’d fallen silent. “Wait, are Witches –your people, they were…?”

He nods slowly. “Dozens of Witches were burned at the stake, or drowned, alongside regular human women. It all started because a Witch told the wrong person about what they could do. We implemented Seals because we didn’t want to risk a repeat of that, even accidentally. We didn’t think it would ever be necessary to tell an outsider what we are, short of them being the president or something. Two to three hundred years later, and we’re still safe, so I’d say it worked.”

For a long moment, silence reigns as the team take in Lance’s solemn words. Even though Allura and Coran look like they’re still trying to process the fact that the Salem witch trials happened at all, they can gather enough from what he says to see why Witches decided to start using Seals in the first place. He hopes they can see that it’s a survival tactic, a way to keep Witches to themselves so that they can live their lives in peace, without existing in constant fear of someone finding out, of the horrors of the witch trials repeating themselves as something worse off this time.

(As peaceful as living life as a Witch can be, considering what most do.)

“So,” Pidge pipes up. “This is seriously bugging me; how the heck did you hide your powers from the mind-meld exercises we do? I mean, this is obviously a _huge_ part of you and your life, but we didn’t get anything from the mind-meld. Was it the Seal?”

Lance gives her a grateful look for changing the topic to help get rid of the heavy atmosphere that lingers over them. “I was changing my memories to hide whatever magical thing was in them so what you guys saw would look ordinary.” When he catches the slightly confused looks of his teammates, he elaborates. “Think of it like a bed. The mattress is my memories, and what I was doing was putting a different patterned bedcover over it so you wouldn’t see under it.”

Pidge stares at him. “You can do that.”

He smiles faintly. “Magic can do things, Pidgey.”

“I want.”

“I know.”

Pidge scowls at him as she playfully jabs him in the ribs with her elbow, to which he purposefully ruffles her hair as messily as he can while the others laugh at Pidge’s indignant squeak.

“Okay, okay,” she says as she tries to pat down her wild hair. “What else can you do? I’m going to assume psychokinesis is, like, your primary ability, and then there’s that whole memory thing which sounds concerning but not at the same time,” Pidge drags in a breath to slow down her rambling. “But, can you do anything else?”

“Yeah, um…actually, I’m not entirely sure this one thing I can do now is strictly because I’m a Witch.” He scratches the side of his head since he can’t get to his oversensitive neck. “I think it’s something to do with Blue.”

“What do you mean?” Shiro asks, looking keenly interested. Anything to do with the Lions can pique his interest in two seconds flat.

Lance wonders how he should go about doing this. “I think my connection with Blue has kind of had me developing a new ability, but I still don’t know how to control it.”

Coran hums, eyes going big the more he starts nodding and stroking his moustache so quickly it starts fluffing up, completely obscuring his mouth. “Well, it isn’t unlikely that you might discover a new power. You are a Witch, and on your planet Witches are humans who are more attuned to magic, as you call it, or quintessence, as we do. Perhaps your sensitivity to quintessence and your connection to Blue has led to this new development?”

“Yes,” Allura agrees, looking at Lance with such intense focus and interest that she looks like Pidge. Lance dreads the day those two team up. “Can you give us a demonstration?”

Lance nods, hesitantly, because he’s not entirely sure if he can. This new power is completely, well, new. All his other powers are things he’s had since before he can remember. They’re like his limbs, and it’s automatic to reach out for the magic and feel it responding to him.

This new power, though, it’s different. He can touch it, just barely skim its surface, but a large part of it is locked somewhere inside him. It’s like trying to open a door with the wrong key, and no matter how he jiggles the key, the door remains shut. He doesn’t know why, and Blue doesn’t seem to know how to reach in and draw it out, either.

He can try, at least.

Lance closes his eyes, putting his hand on his knee, palm up. He lets his consciousness loosen from his body, feels it winding around as he casts about, looking for the power. Faintly, he touches the life sources of his friends that so mimics their Lions; Keith’s fiery essence, Pidge’s inquisitive green, Hunk’s caring yellow, Shiro’s protective black that is so deep it’s violet at the edges, Allura’s chipper pink that grows a little darker towards the centre, Coran’s bright attention-grabbing orange. He draws away from them, focusing elsewhere, searching deeper inside himself.

And then, there, he feels it. A twinge of ice prickles his senses, the chill creeping up his spine as his palm tingles.

He clenches his jaw, brows furrowing as he digs deeper, trying to pull out that strange new power he can just _feel_ wanting to surge to meet him. He can feel it swirling somewhere deep inside him, so far away that he can’t reach all of it, can’t see just how much of it there is. He only manages to pull out a little, and send it to his hand.

He opens his eyes slowly when he hears the team collectively gasp in surprise. He looks down and an ecstatic grin breaks out over his face when he sees the little snow flurry slowly whirling in the palm of his hand, like a small, tame version of a snowstorm cupped in his hand. As soon as he opens his eyes and is distracted by the wonderstruck faces of his team, his friends, his space family, the snow flurry disappears with a painful electric jolt in his veins.

He inhales sharply from the unexpected twinge of pain and flinches, and that seems to break everyone out of their stupor. They start forward, as if ready to scoop him up and haul him back to the med-bay, but he waves their concern off.

He smiles weakly at them. “Sorry. That’s all I can do for now. I’ve tried to do more, but whenever I reach too far, I just, um…” okay, well, he doesn’t want to say that. He doesn’t want to worry them.

Unfortunately, they can already tell something’s up. Allura’s gaze sharpens on him, while Shiro fixes Lance with a stern –yet gentle, how the heck does the man _do_ that? –look and says, “Lance, what happens when you go too far? We need to know.”

A faint flush of embarrassment brushes his cheeks as he ducks his head. “I faint. Usually.” He mutters. There was that one time he was comatose for three days when he was a kid, but that was because he thought uprooting a tree and planting it twenty feet away would be a good idea.

It was not.

“Usually?” Hunk repeats. Lance glances up to see Hunk looking back with his eyes full of worry. He reaches over and puts his hand on Lance’s shoulder, grounding him, reassuring him. “You can tell us, Lance. Please.”

“Yeah,” Pidge adds. “We need to know what happens if you do too much at once with your powers, so we can know how to help. Even Keith knows when to tell us he’s sprained his wrist.”

Keith glowers at her, though not quite as heated as it usually looks. “That was one time, Pidge.”

Pidge lifts a brow. “Would you have told anyone if I hadn’t found you messing with the healing pods? You were about to use your knife to open it.”

Keith doesn’t reply, and Lance chuckles, shaking his head wryly. “Why am I not surprised? Seriously.”

Keith turns the scowl on him, but Lance just shoots him his winning smile. Keith rolls his eyes, but Lance doesn’t miss the way the corners of his lips turn up. The resulting flutter of those damn _feelings_ has him snapping his attention back to the current issue at hand, rather than thinking about those _feelings_ and how much he wants to act on them when he knows he shouldn’t, can’t.

“Lance,” Allura says, resting her elbows on her knees. “We do need to know. Think about it this way; what if you’re practicing with your powers and overextend yourself, and the Galra attack? You could do yourself untold damage like that. We need to know how we can better help you, especially if the healing pods don’t work on magical wounds or strains.”

“Yet,” Coran adds, clearly still fixated on his goal of fixing up the healing pods to actually help Lance when he needs it.

Allura smiles. “Yes. But in the meantime, we don’t want a repeat of what happened, with you falling into such a state and us having no idea what to do, how we can help.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles quietly, ducking his head. “I didn’t –I don’t mean to cause you guys any trouble.”

Her face softens at that. “Do not get me wrong, Lance. I’m not saying that you’re a nuisance. It’s just, I’d like to be better prepared in case something does happen related to your abilities, so that I can help.” She glances around to the rest of the team, all nodding in agreement with her words. “So that we can _all_ help. We’re a team, Lance. Not just that, but I’d like to think we’re a family. We’re here for you, just like we know you’re there for us.”

Lance has to work around the boulder of emotion lodged in his throat at that, blinking rapidly to expel the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes at the sheer acceptance and love from his space family. “Yeah. Okay, I get you.”

And so they pass another two hours like that, them asking him questions about what he can do, Coran asking what kind of effect his powers had on him, Allura musing about whether his powers were the reason his connection to Blue is so strong. Pidge shoots off question after question about Witch history, Witch abilities, anything that could be of interest to her weird genius mind.

Lance keeps his story skimming at the surface, unwilling to delve deeper into his people’s past and story. He plans to tell them. Eventually. Just not yet. He’s not entirely sure why he’s still trying to keep the full frontal force of what he is a secret, but he’s not about to question his gut instinct about it. That instinct is what has kept him alive, both back home and out in space.

When Lance yawns for the third time, Shiro changes directions (with a warning Dad Look at Pidge) to give Lance some cool-down time from all the talking. The team reveal their secrets to one another, secrets that to him seem small, but when he puts himself in his friends’ shoes, he realizes that those secrets and how they fear the team will react are definitely enough to cause some tension between them, even inadvertently. The Alteans, to their credit, don’t quite seem to understand the human emotional mechanics that would make the Paladins feel the way they do about their secrets (Alteans happen[ed] to be quite the liberal species).

He’ll swear that he pays attention while they do it, despite drifting off sometimes. He now knows Pidge maybe just quite possibly has a gambling problem (she actually goes back to her room and returns with two very heavy satchels full of GAC currency from her exploits whenever they got to an inhabited planet or space mall). Hunk used to take medication for his anxiety, which goes to show just how bad it can actually get, and while he’s been off the meds for two years now, sometimes the anxiety can still get pretty bad. Shiro sometimes has waking nightmares, something he hasn’t told them because a part of him was worried they wouldn’t see him as worthy of being their team leader if they knew (Lance just wants to hug him and wish him better, after all he’s been through). Lance doesn’t pay much more mind than that when Allura talks them through why they felt the need to keep their secrets a secret.

He is exhausted from talking so much (hah, how ironic), and from just coming out of the healing pod before being swept back under by his Seal breaking. Especially because he’s nineteen, now. Breaking his Seal on his nineteenth birthday pulled more out of him than he should have given, and it will take a while for him to get back up to top shape.

And really, he pretty much almost dies when Keith reveals that his secret is that he’s gay. What? Lance thought he was straight! Girls flocked to him like crazy back at the Garrison, and yeah, now it makes sense why Keith was so brusque with them, but at the time Lance thought the mullet was just being standoffish to look enigmatic and mysterious and more alluring than he already was.

But gay? Keith? Like, Lance is _so sure_ his pure bi soul leaves his body and ascends to heaven at that. He has to take a moment to remember how to breathe at that reveal, and he ends up just wordlessly reaching out and hugging Keith after he comes out to them, a great deal of him noticing how Keith doesn’t stiffen like he did last time they hugged. Keith only keeps his arms awkwardly at his sides for a few seconds this time before reaching up and patting Lance’s shoulder, albeit still awkwardly.

His hug with Keith prompts a tearful Hunk to sweep them up _together_ into one of his famous cuddly bear hugs. Then Hunk pulls Shiro in to the hug. Then Shiro pulls Pidge in, where she wiggles around between them all until she, _somehow,_ has both arms wrapped around Keith and Lance, all after positively yanking Allura and Coran into the impromptu group hug as well.

Lance has never felt so safe, so cosy, and so at home in all his time in space as he does in that moment, surrounded by his space family and all their love.

Of course, he kind of ruins it all when his legs turn to jelly and give out under him, completely drained from the exertion of the last few days. That sends Hunk and Coran into panic mode as Keith –this is becoming a thing –helps Lance hobble to the med-bay while Shiro and Allura watch on worriedly, Hunk and Coran prattling about getting Altean medicine out of cabinets, Pidge hooking Lance back up to that weird heart monitor thing.

(It is apparently a good thing when that monitor flatlines. Somehow, to Alteans it means his heart is beating. If it’s beeping too much, something’s wrong. It’s confusing and Lance gets a headache trying to figure out how that makes any sense.)

Hunk threatens to revoke Lance’s taste tester status if he doesn’t get some rest, while Pidge, delightful little gremlin that she is, threatens to break his knee-caps if he doesn’t get that rest. Shiro even uses his best (translation; scariest) Dad Voice and warns Lance that if he catches Lance out of bed before he’s recovered, he will personally haul Lance back to bed in the most embarrassing manner, with Pidge on standby to take pictures and record videos to last for all eternity.

Lance ends up sleeping through the next three days.

He wakes up to Hunk, Pidge, and Keith all playing poker on a table they pulled up beside his bed, Pidge absolutely destroying the other two even though Keith’s holding his own well enough, while Shiro, Allura, and Coran liaise with Markonyk to start up the negotiations of their alliance.

He still feels like crap physically and mentally, but emotionally, he’s…he’s okay. Not quite there yet, but close.

For the first time since coming to space, the gaping hole in his chest that holds all his longing for home, for the ocean, for Allie, for his siblings, for Mami and Papa, eases its hold on him, just a little. Just enough for him to realize that hey, he’s not with his family on Earth, but he still is with his family out here.

He’s going to be okay.

↭§↭

Despite his face set in perfect neutrality, Lance wonders if it’d be a stretch to say King Lykonark looks _smug as fuck_ as Allura and the Paladins stand before him five days after he pulled his shitty move of calling Lance out on his secret.

He also wonders what would happen if he lifted Lykonark’s throne and maybe just stuck it, and him on it, to a wall and left him there. He decides not to try it when darkness swims in the corners of his vision, his limbs still lethargic and strength not yet returned after the ordeal of the last couple of days.

“Princess Allura, Paladins of Voltron,” he demurs. He’s not smiling, but Lance thinks he’s definitely doing the Xyphelian version of smirking. If they smirk, that is. “I am glad you have returned to continue.”

Allura smiles frigidly at Lykonark, and Lance is so, so glad that smile isn’t turned on him. “Yes, King Lykonark, we have returned, after,” she tilts her head to the side just a little, turquoise-lilac eyes flashing dangerously. “Having complied with your one non-negotiable term.”

Lykonark waves a hand in acceptance of the unsaid words lingering heavy in Allura’s displeased tone. “I do apologize for what inconvenience it has caused you. But you must understand, Princess, Paladins,” he nods at them, black eyes seeming to linger on Lance’s longest. “I am King of my people. I represent their wishes, and I am the shield that defends them from all threats that would seek to harm them. I could not simply go ahead with this alliance knowing that there is even the slightest possibility that the dissent brewing between the Paladins could have unravelled the fight against the Galra Empire. I hope you understand that, Lance McClain.”

Lance starts a little at the sound of his name. He glances around himself, at his friends, who all nod encouragingly at him (whilst still looking at Lykonark with varying degrees of suspicion and ire) before he looks back at Allura. She smiles at him, stepping to the side and gesturing for him to come stand by her side.

Lance gulps and fights as hard as he can to ignore the black dots flowering in the corners of his vision and the strange, floaty feeling in his head as he approaches her. He turns back to Lykonark, who’s still watching him contemplatively, and he realizes that the king is waiting for an actual response.

He coughs, trying to mask his nervousness by seemingly clearing his throat. “Uh, yeah –yes, King Lykonark. I understand.”

Lykonark nods gratefully before continuing. “And I want to thank you for the sacrifice you made. I know it could not have been easy to reveal your secret and heal the rifts forming between you all. Sometimes it is easier to let these negative emotions fester, rather than to go through the hard work of repairing the faults that lie in everyone involved. It takes strength, and courage, to do what you did. What all of you did. So, thank you, all of you.” This time, Lykonark meets the eyes of each and every one of the Paladins, seeming to linger for a second longer on Keith.

Then Lykonark looks back at Lance and cocks his head speculatively the longer the seconds tick by with no word said on either side. Then, he says, “No estás bien.”

Lance swallows thickly at the sound of his mother tongue flowing from the lips of an alien. He glances to Allura, who simply nods, giving him permission to converse in whatever language he’s comfortable with. He briefly considers replying in English, but then thinks about the fact that last time Lykonark spoke in Spanish, it was to preserve some of Lance’s privacy regarding his big secret, no matter how small and, quite frankly, pathetic the attempt was. If Lykonark is speaking Spanish now, it’s probably with good reason. Lance figures he can humour the king, for a while.

Plus, he doesn’t want his team to needlessly worry about him.

“Voy a estar bien.” He replies simply.

“Mi sanadores pueden ser de ayuda.”

Lance smile is forlorn, and he is grateful his back is turned to his team, so that they don’t see it. “Mi enfermedad debe pasar por su propia cuenta. Y lo hará.”

“¿Al principio, porque estas enfermo, Paladín Azul?”

Lance gives him a hard look at that. “Te dije que mi gente no se revelan a los de afuera con razón.”

Lykonark hums thoughtfully. “Discúlpame por el dolor que te a causado, Lance, incluso si fue indirectamente. Sé que no pudo haber sido fácil, revelarle a ellos lo que eres, a pesar de el hecho que no les dijiste todo,” he pauses heavily, and Lance feels his heart sink like a stone. “El hecho de que no diles todo.”

“Todo es…complicado.” He replies slowly. Gods, if Lykonark forces him to _everything_ to his friends right now, he might actually die _._ Especially because he feels like shit right now. Very pretty shit, but shit nonetheless.  “Pero se lo diré a ellos. Solamente, necesito tiempo.”

Lykonark laces his fingers together, watching Lance over them as the Blue Paladin stares fearlessly back. Lance wonders if the faint twitch of the king’s lipless mouth is his imagination. “Lo se. Lo puedo sentir. Tu inhibición, tu miedo de lo que te pasara a ti y lo que tus amigos pensaran de ti, se está desapareciendo, poco a poco. Hay otras cosas que tendrás que confrontar, con ellos y por ellos. Pero por ahora,” Lykonark moves then, standing to his full height before stepping down from the pulpit his throne is pedestalled on as he swiftly approaches Lance and Allura. “Let us begin drawing up the contract detailing our alliance and commitment to the Voltron Coalition, shall we?”

Lance steps back then, returning to stand by his teammates as Allura nods decisively at Lykonark. The king comes to stand next to the Princess as the council members, for the first time (and he’ll deny this to his last breath, but they damn well near terrify him out of his pants –armour –when they move. He’d begun genuinely thinking they were statues), rise from their seats.

Markonyk steps forward, waving his hand almost lazily. The floor in the middle of the council room opens up, plating and sliding over each other as a large, round wooden table set in the same colour as the blue leaves of the trees rises out, with enough chairs to sit everyone in the room coming up before the floor folds in over itself and returning to its previous state.

“Okay, that is cool,” Hunk comments, staring at where the floor seamlessly merges with the table’s and chair’s legs.

Pidge shrugs. “A little rudimentary.”

“Everything that isn’t Olkarion is rudimentary to you.” Keith points out.

Lance smirks at that. “Mullet-man’s right on that, Pidgeon.”

She scowls at him, looking almost as fearsome as Keith. “What is with you and your dumb pet names?”

He gasps dramatically. “Pidgey! I thought you love my pet names!”

“Uh, sure, keep thinking that.” She smirks. “Noodle.”

After a round of snickering with each other that has Allura glancing over at them with fondness stealing into the professional set of her eyes and Lykonark looking at them with what Lance will swear up and down is an amused smirk, Shiro quietens the younger Paladins down and herds them like a soccer mom to the table, settling them in their respective seats (but seriously, how are the Xyphelians colour-coding everything?). Lance manages to get one last joke in about Shiro being their designated Space Dad, which he monotonously replies with, “I’m not your dad,” to which the rest of the Paladins retort with, “Sure, dad,” before they get to business.

Business is, predictably, boring. So much so that Lance drifts off a few times, and each time he manages to snap himself awake, the sluggishness in his limbs and heaviness of his eyes has him wondering if the next time he snoozes, he’ll be able to wake up at all.

↭§↭

For reasons still frustratingly beyond him, Keith can’t take his eyes off Lance for longer than one minute and thirty-two seconds (Pidge informs him that she timed this) in the entire two hours the Paladins remain in the council room chambers before a break is called by the king when he sees Hunk dozing off in his seat.

(Hunk apologizes so profusely for it that Lykonark smiles – _actually smiles –_ and reassures him that it’s fine.)

Sure, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why Keith would be staring at Lance. For one, the fact that he’d thought Lance was _dying_ when he suddenly collapsed in the common room of the Castle, blood pouring out of his nose and ears and even his _eyes._ For another, he just found out that Lance is a Witch, and has actual powers. 

There’s also King Lykonark just so _casually_ speaking to Lance in Spanish, and Lance going along with it, leaving the rest of them in the dark. That irritates the hell out of Keith. He hates feeling like he’s the only one out of the loop. Though, to be fair, the other Paladins don’t know enough Spanish to understand, either. Plus, Allura’s an actual Altean who can only understand her Paladins thanks to translators, though she and Coran are making an effort to learn English.

None of that makes him feel any better. Why couldn’t Coran’s update on their armours and helmets include translators that _actually translate multiple languages_ instead of just the common ones? Or why couldn’t his stupid brain at least retain _some_ of the Spanish he’d picked up from the foster homes he’d been thrown in along the border? What embarrassingly little he can recall doesn’t help him to pick out more than one or two words from the conversation.

Then there’s also the fact that Lance has a bad habit of lying about how he actually feels –and Keith’s worried that Lance feels how he actually looks, which is like crap. Lance’s skin is pale, with dark circles under his usually vibrant blue eyes, his hands shake with imperceptible tremors every so often, and when they were walking on their way here, Lance didn’t…his eyes sometimes looked a little too far-off, a little too hazy for Keith to be absolutely certain his mind is where his body is, too.

(Also, and you’d sooner catch Keith digging his own grave with a dagger with his name waiting on the side than admitting it, but Lance is nice to look at.)

But truth is, none of those reasons really sit right with him. Yes, he’s getting increasingly concerned with the noticeable pallor to Lance’s usually dusky skin, but it’s more than that. It’s been going on for longer than that, too. Keith can’t quite pinpoint when it began, but at some point in the last year they’d shared together going on space adventures while fighting an intergalactic war, Lance had gone from being the annoying and brazen loudmouth to the friend (friend? Can he call them friends? He hopes so. He really hopes so) who liked to tease Keith so much that he blushed like a Christmas tree, the friend who is always there to have Keith’s back when he goes off and does something stupid like the reckless shtick he is.

The friend Keith was so petrifyingly terrified would disappear like everyone else in his life has a tendency of doing.

But if anyone’s going to ask him now why he won’t stop staring (glaring, it looks like glaring honestly) at Lance, he’ll just shrug and say he’s simply worried because Lance had a goddamn brain aneurysm only a few hours ago, his heart stopped beating and he just stopped _breathing,_ which is a thing humans need to do to survive, and is having to recover from all that trauma the slow way, without a healing pod.

You don’t sleep through three straight days if you’re ‘fine’, as Lance insists he is.

Apparently, he’s not the only one thinking along those lines. As the Paladins follow Markonyk to where he’s leading them to their quarters, he lingers close to the back of the group where Lance is, while Hunk and Pidge are at the front talking to Markonyk about something, and Shiro and Allura are in the middle. Every time he glances to the side, Lance has that concerning far-off look in his eye, and Keith catches him scratching at his wrists every so often. Whatever is bothering Lance, Keith figures it’s the only reason he doesn’t catch Shiro asking Allura if she thinks Lance is really up to spending another who-knows-how-many hours going over the alliance deal with the king.

Keith doesn’t see her face, but he can imagine the concerned frown she wears as she mumbles, “I think we should let him rest for it. King Lykonark will understand, and while the readings from the data Coran retrieved from Lance’s vitals show that he’s physically all right, I do not think it wise to let him push himself like too much.”

Shiro nods. “I agree. We don’t know what effect breaking that Seal has on his magic, and how that in itself affects him.” Keith catches the faint smile on Shiro’s face when he shakes his head lightly. “I still can’t believe that there are people with magic, real magic, back home…” he muses.

Allura gives him a look with one eyebrow raised, an amused smile tilting the corner of her lips up. “I am surprised that the existence of magical users on your planet is not common knowledge, outside of fictional stories. On Altea, while rare, knowledge of those who could tap into their own quintessence as well as the surrounding’s was well-known.” Keith doesn’t miss the way her shoulders stiffen. “Like Haggar, it would seem.”

Shiro doesn’t say anything, maybe because there isn’t really anything that can be said when you discover that an evil Druidic witch also happens to be the Altean, Honerva, that Allura once knew as a child. He simply pats her shoulder comfortingly. She smiles gratefully at him before turning to face forward with a cool look on her face when Markonyk asks her a question.

Distracted by Allura and Shiro’s conversation, it’s only when Keith glances to his side now that he realizes Lance isn’t walking beside him anymore. He looks back and sees Lance has stopped a couple of paces behind them, staring at the ground almost unseeingly. Keith separates himself from the group, figuring he’ll just ask directions from the Xyphelians moving nimbly about if he loses sight of the other Paladins, and quickly jogs back to Lance.

“Lance?” he calls. Lance doesn’t respond, only continues to stare blankly at the floor. Keith frowns, picks up his pace until he’s standing right in front of Lance. He still doesn’t respond, standing so still it looks unnatural. Hesitantly, Keith reaches out and touches Lance’s shoulder. “Lance?”

The touch seems to stir Lance out of whatever daze he was trapped in. He blinks at the floor, then at Keith, several times, like he’s confused about why Keith is standing in front of him, or why he’s not staring at the floor anymore. Some of the haze clears from his eyes a little, but he’s still standing too statuesque for Keith’s liking.

“Hey, mullet,” he murmurs, smiling feebly.

Keith’s gaze sharpens at the way his incandescent cerulean eyes can’t seem to focus directly on Keith the way they usually do. “Lance, are you okay?”

“I’m –” Lance cuts himself off abruptly, staring fixedly at the ground again.

Keith doesn’t know whether to be glad or horrified about that.

Usually, Lance will brush off other’s concerns over his well-being. It’s become a Thing about Lance that Keith doesn’t like, at all. But if Lance isn’t doing that now, if he’s actually contemplating telling someone that no, he’s not fine…then Keith’s very worried about just how much pain Lance has been trying to hide all this time.

“Actually,” Lance grins, though it’s a little weak around the edges, not quite so cocky and confident as he usually is. “Since you seem to be my relegated body bearer, I’m gonna need you to catch me, ’cause I’m about to faint again.”

What?

“Wait, wha –” Keith doesn’t have time to get anything else out before Lance slumps in a dead faint, knees buckling as he groans, eyes rolling back in his head.

Keith lunges forward, and thanks to the warning, he has just enough time to bodily stop Lance from falling over and face-planting on the floor. He ends up on his knees, gently laying Lance down flat on the ground, head resting on Keith’s lap, before his hands flutter worryingly over Lance’s prone body, curses and confused questions streaming out of him. Lance remains oblivious to it all

“Dammit, Lance, you’re burning up,” Keith mutters as he puts the back of his hand to Lance’s cheeks, then cups his neck. Lance literally feels like he’s on fire, his skin so hot to the touch that Keith is stunned the boy isn’t drenched in sweat, or that no one noticed. But then, Lance is disturbingly good at hiding these kind of things from everyone else.

But that doesn’t matter right now. He can give Lance endless shit for hiding how he is doing later. Lance needs to get into a healing pod, _now._

He looks back up, a wild look in his eye, frantic when he doesn’t see the Paladins, when he finally notices that this stretch of hallways they’re in is goddamn _empty_. “Shiro? Shiro!”

It doesn’t take longer than a three seconds for Shiro to come sprinting around a corner, quickly followed by the other Paladins and Allura and Markonyk, confusion etched on their faces at why Keith would be yelling with such fear in his voice. The confusion quickly melts to panic when they see Keith on the floor with Lance cradled in his arms, knocked unconscious.

Everything happens so quickly then, Keith is sure he’d miss all of it if he wasn’t right in the thick of it, thanks to being, as Lance put it, his relegated body bearer. Keith is the one to carry Lance bridal style through the too-many halls of the tree-palace, following Allura and Markonyk’s quick progress out of the palace and back to the Castle. Keith is the one to tell Allura what happened, that Lance has a dangerously high fever, information she relays to Coran waiting in the infirmary with a healing pod set to go. Keith is the one who helps removes Lance’s armour again, Coran then hustling Keith into propping Lance up in the pod after they get him changed into one of the med-bay’s bodysuits.

Keith is the one to sneak into the infirmary when everyone else is asleep (or, in Shiro’s case, either checking that everyone else is sleeping or in the bridge, quietly obsessively planning future fighting tactics to avoid what happened to Lance with the ion canon from happening again), sitting in front of Lance’s pod to stare up at his pale face awash in the soft blue lights of the cryopod’s inner walls as he listlessly fiddles with his Blade of Marmora dagger, counting down the time it will take before the pod lets Lance out. Red’s purrs in the back of his mind are his only comfort in the dark and cold of the lonely infirmary as he waits.

↭§↭

As Lance fades in and out of temporary oblivion, sometimes catching glimpses of fiery red, sunshine yellow, forest green, deepest black, starburst pink, and volcanic orange, he feels like he’s smiling, but he can’t really tell. It doesn’t matter, anyways. He’ll wake up soon enough, this he knows, and then everything can go back to normal. The voices are still there, whispering tauntingly to him, but a wash of cool blue and deep, protective growls chases them away, far enough that he finds some peace for a little while. The blue wraps itself around him, cuddling him, protecting him, and he feels like he smiles at that, though he can’t quite tell.

He’ll be okay.

↭§↭

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied when I said this wouldn’t have much Klance.  
> I can’t believe I legitimately thought this would be 10k words.
> 
> Translations for the Spanish used in this fic are in the next chapter, because I THOUGHT it would be simple to put in the hover translations I've seen in some of my fave fics where Lance and Keith speak Spanish and Korean respectively, but, um...IT'S A LOT HARDER THAN THAT WTF. Plus I really want to post this fic in time for Hunk's (and my birthday, yes, we're born on the same day, WHOOT-WHOOT) birthday, and it'd take too long to go through everything and fix it so...yeah. Sorry for the inconvenience.
> 
> But other than that, how'd you guys like this? I really want to know, I'm not just fishing for compliments here but I really want to know what you guys think of this fic! Or if you don't want to write a whole long-winded review/comment/thing, just a simple line or two will do. OR, you can drop a thought or two on what you think about all the things I foreshadowed in this fic, about this mysterious Allie and what she means to Lance, what you want/hope to see in the next installation...anything, really, will make my day! :D
> 
> 16.01.2018 update: major, huge, massive shout-out and thank you to [Mattresssama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mattresssama/pseuds/Mattresssama) for providing the translations to the Spanish used in this fic! I'll be updating the next chapter with the correct translations.


	2. Spanish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's the Spanish that was used in this fic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so, so happy I'm paranoid AF and saved a copy of the translations and stuff somewhere.
> 
> Also, Spanish isn't a language I know or have any educational experience with. Languages I know are just Russian, Japanese, and Kiswahili (with English being my first). It's thanks to my all-encompassing love for Lance that I've started learning Spanish with Duolingo. As such, if I've made a mistake anywhere, please do tell me so I can correct it! I don't mean to offend or insult anyone, I just really wanted to write bilingual Lance faithfully (as much as I can not knowing a lick of Spanish to begin with).
> 
> 16.01.2018 update: thanks to [Mattresssama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mattresssama/pseuds/Mattresssama), these translations are now correct!

“Ay, ay, no comiences con esto otra vez,” he scolds it, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at its antics.

_"Ay, ay, don't start with this again,"_

_  
_

_No estoy allí, no estoy allí,_ he thinks as he summons an easy smile to his face. _Estoy aquí, estoy aquí._

_I'm not there, I'm not there, I’m here, I’m here._

_  
_

Niña  


__Girl_ _

   


Niño bonito  
_Pretty boy_  
  
  


“Casa, te extraño, te extraño muchísimo.” _  
_Home, I miss you, I miss you so much.__

   


* * *

   


**Conversation with King Lykonark**

When Lykonark speaks in his mother tongue, though, he doesn’t even try to hide his surprise as he gapes stupidly at the King. “Usted esconde muchas cosas de tus compañeros, de tus amigos.”

> _You hide many things from your teammates, your friends._

Lance can literally feel the surprise and shock rippling from the Paladins, and Allura by his side, as he gapes at Lykonark, who only gazes impassively back at him. Lance swallows thickly, trying to reel in the obvious scrambling mess his mind has dissolved into.

“Cómo –¿sabes el español?” he asks, his voice only just above a speaker, only just loud enough to carry across to the King.

> _How -how do you know Spanish?_

“Para que puedas hablar como lo harías con aquellos que no conoce tu verdad oculta.”

> _I speak the language that is your truth, blue Paladin, so that you may be free to speak as you would to those who do not know of your hidden truth._  
> 

“Y tú?” he whispers. “¿Sabes lo que soy?”

> _Do you?_ _Do you know what I am?_

Lykonark is silent for a brief moment before he shifts. Then he stands, in a move so fluid and graceful that Lance would be half-tempted to call the King a dancer, if he wasn’t still trying to digest the fact that he is speaking in Spanish, his mother tongue, with an alien that he’s terrified can see deeper into Lance than Lance can himself.

He gulps nervously as Lykonark moves forward swiftly, tensing when Lykonark comes to stand before him. Most of the Xyphelians are tall, literally Galra tall give or take a few inches, but Lykonark seems even larger than that as he towers over Lance. It’s almost like the mere acknowledgement of his status as King makes him bigger than he already is, and not just in physical stature.

Lykonark’s eyes bore deep into Lance as he tries not to look away from that black gaze. Lance struggles to keep his eyes on the King, to not let them slide away and focus on anything other than that piercing black gaze that feels like its digging through his head, his _soul,_ searching for the deepest secret he buries under mountains of false self-confidence and cockiness.

“Un poder con el que has vivido toda tu vida, aún no sabes cuanto poderoso puede ser.” Lykonark tilts his head to the side, almost curiously. “Tienes miedo de esa fuerza.”

> _You have a power, deep inside you. A power you have lived with your whole life, yet you do not know how strong it can be. You fear that strength.  
>  _

Lance instinctively stiffens when Lykonark raises a hand, but he doesn’t try to touch Lance. Instead, he taps the back of his own neck. “La razón porque escondes esto de tus amigos es por lo que está enterrado abajo de tu piel, aquí.”

> _The reason you hide this from your friends is because of what is buried under your skin, here._  
> 

Hesitantly, Lance nods. He waits for something, some twinge of pain, some electric shock travelling through his body, but nothing happens. He frowns slightly in confusion. Does the tattoo not work if someone already knows what you are?

Lykonark bows his head slightly in understanding, as if he has just found confirmation of something he suspected. That unnerves Lance. In fact, this whole situation is rattling him to the core. How the hell is the king of an alien planet speaking to him in _Spanish?_

Aliens don’t even actually understand English. It’s just thanks to the translators in the Paladins’ helmets that they can communicate with the alien species their jobs as Paladins has them interacting with on a near daily basis. Translators installed in the Castle’s systems allow the Paladins to give simple orders like ‘end training sequence’ or ‘room, lights out’ or some such, and lets them talk with Allura and Coran without having to struggle to understand each other thanks to the Alteans not knowing any English beyond what the Paladins teach them.

For a second, he fears that those same translators will reveal to the Paladins what Lykonark is saying to him. His gut uncoils slightly when he remembers that the translators only work on the most common languages, like English. It’s why Shiro only gets to speak Japanese with Keith, and Keith with Korean to Shiro. Hunk knows a little Spanish, but not enough to carry a full conversation with Lance. Pidge and Hunk know each other’s mother tongues better, Italian and Samoan respectively.

For the first time, Lance is grateful to be alone in being the only one able to speak Spanish. But how? How can Lykonark speak Spanish to him?

Not only that, but how does Lykonark know about Lance’s powers? Actually, scratch that, that can be explained by the whole sensing-emotions gimmick, but not the total lack of reaction from Lance’s tattoo. The fact that he feels nothing, no overwhelming pain, not so much as a tease of a headache, nothing more than a tingle at the back of his neck, is throwing him off.

Lance blinks in surprise when Lykonark turns around abruptly, walking back to his throne with as much effortless elegance and poise he had in leaving it. His robe, stiff as it looks, flutters a little at the hems as he turns and settles back in his throne, eyes still pinning Lance to where he stands beside a distressed Allura trying to conceal that distress behind a placid, if nettled, face.

“Créeme cuando digo que yo lamento tener que hacer esto. Pero no tengo otra opción.” The King sounds sorrowful, and Lance wonders if it’s genuine. “Mi gente necesitan está alianza igual como tu equipo, Pero no podemos poner nuestras vidas en las manos de los que no pueden confiar en sus propios compañeros.”

> _Believe me when I say I am sorry that I must do this, Lance McClain, but I have no choice. My people need this alliance as much as your team does, but we cannot put our lives in the hands of those who cannot trusts themselves to their own teammates.  
>  _

For a second, he doesn’t quite understand what the King means. What does he mean, he’s ‘sorry’? What does he mean, Lance doesn’t trust his teammates? Of course he trusts them! He’d give his life for them, he’s fighting this war with them, for them. What the hell is Lykonark talking about?

It only takes him repeating Lykonark’s words in his head before Lance’s eyes widen as the realization of what he’s saying strikes him like a bolt of lightning. He’s quite sure he looks like he’s seen a ghost, by this point, or is becoming one himself. He feels like his soul is leaving his body, leaving him to deal with this mess he stumbled into.

“No, por favor,” he pleads, uncaring for the faint warble in his voice. “No entiendes. Hay una razón porque mi gente no se revelan a los de afuera, por favor!”

> __No, please, you don't understand. There's a reason my people don't reveal ourselves to outsiders, please!_ _

   


* * *

 

 _ _ _“Cállate, mullet-head.”  
___ Shut up, mullet-head.

   


* * *

   


   


**Lance's dream sequence**

___  
_ _ _

He’s thirteen, and more scared than he’s ever been as he stares up at the magnificent structure of the Order’s main headquarters rising up tall in front of him. Mami rubs her hand in circles at his back, reassuring him, as Papa puts his arm around Lance’s shoulders, reassuring him, and Allie grips his hand tight, reassuring him. He chose this, because he wants to protect his family, to keep them safe. But he’s scared.

“No te preocupes,” Allie leans in to whisper to him. “Puede ser que no están a nuestro lado pero tampoco están del lado de ellos. No te harán daño.”

> _Don’t worry.They might not be on our side, but they’re not on their side, either. They won’t hurt you._  
> 

Lance gulps, nods. “Sí. Lo sé. Pero todos dicen que entrenamiento is super difícil.”

> _Yeah. I know. But everyone says the training is super hard._

She shrugs. Her teal blue eyes, identical to his in every way, spark with mischief as she smiles impishly at him. “Si te lastiman, no te preocupes, hermanito. Yo te protegeré.”

> _If they hurt you, don't worry, little brother. I'll protect you._

Lance smiles.

Papa taps them on their heads, smiling when they both duck their heads at the same time. “Practice your English, mis niños.”

> _my children._

  


  


“Don’t be a hero, mijo, mi precioso muchacho,” she whispers, pressing a kiss to his hair. “Heroes don’t make it home, and you have to survive, Alejandro. You have to live. Tienes que hacerlo, ¿dónde Alex no podia.”

> _My son, my precious boy._ _You have to make it where Alex could not._
> 
> “Humano.”  
>  _Human._

Papa reaches out to cup Lance’s cheek in his palm, turning his head so Lance is looking right into his father’s eyes. “Pase lo que pase, Lance, debes vivir. Don’t let Alex’s sacrifice mean nothing.”

> _No matter what, Lance, you must live._
> 
>    
> 
> 
>   
> 

“Lo siento, hermanito,” she whispers when he picks up, her voice a little different through the thousands of miles separating them with the only thing connecting them being two phones, but still the same voice he knows. “Lo siento que que tengas que sufrir así.”

> _I’m sorry, little brother. I’m sorry you have to suffer like this._

Lance huddles deeper under his blanket, listening to the steady breathing of Hunk sleeping on the other end of the room. “Lo sé, Allie. Lo sé.”

> _I know, Allie. I know._
> 
>    
> 

* * *

___  
_ _ _

“maldita sea, ¿por qué es tan difícil?”  
____damn, why is this so hard?____

____  
_ _ _ _

* * *

 

**Second conversation with Lykonark**

Then Lykonark looks back at Lance and cocks his head speculatively the longer the seconds tick by with no word said on either side. Then, he says, “No estás bien.”

> _You are not well._

Lance swallows thickly at the sound of his mother tongue flowing from the lips of an alien. He glances to Allura, who simply nods, giving him permission to converse in whatever language he’s comfortable with. He briefly considers replying in English, but then thinks about the fact that last time Lykonark spoke in Spanish, it was to preserve some of Lance’s privacy regarding his big secret, no matter how small and, quite frankly, pathetic the attempt was. If Lykonark is speaking Spanish now, it’s probably with good reason. Lance figures he can humour the king, for a while.

Plus, he doesn’t want his team to needlessly worry about him.

“Voy a estar bien.” He replies simply.

> _I'll be fine._  
> 

“Mi sanadores pueden ser de ayuda.”

> _My healers may be of help to you._

Lance smile is forlorn, and he is grateful his back is turned to his team, so that they don’t see it. “Mi enfermedad debe pasar por su propia cuenta. Y lo hará.” _  
_

> _My illness must pass on its own. And it will._

“¿ Al principio, porque estas enfermo, Paladín Azul?”

> _Why are you ill in the first place, blue Paladin?_

Lance gives him a hard look at that. “Te dije que mi gente no se revelan a los de afuera con razón.”

> _I told you my people do not reveal ourselves to outsiders for a reason._

Lykonark hums thoughtfully. “Discúlpame por el dolor que te a causado, Lance, incluso si fue indirectamente. Sé que no pudo haber sido fácil, revelarle a ellos lo que eres, a pesar de el hecho que no les dijiste todo,” he pauses heavily, and Lance feels his heart sink like a stone. “El hecho de que no diles todo.”

> _I apologize for what pain I have caused you, Lance, even if indirectly. I know it could not have been easy to reveal to them what you did, despite the fact that you did not tell them everything._

“Todo es...complicado.” He replies slowly. Gods, if Lykonark forces him to _everything_ to his friends right now, he might actually die _._ Especially because he feels like shit right now. Very pretty shit, but shit nonetheless.  “Pero se lo diré a ellos. Solamente, necesito tiempo.”

> _Everything is...complicated. But I will tell them. I just -I need time._

Lykonark laces his fingers together, watching Lance over them as the blue Paladin stares fearlessly back. Lance wonders if the faint twitch of the king’s lipless mouth is his imagination. “Lo se. Lo puedo sentir. Tu inhibición, tu miedo de lo que te pasara a ti y lo que tus amigos pensaran de ti, se está desapareciendo, poco a poco. Hay otras cosas que tendrás que enfrentar/ confrontar, con ellos y por ellos. Pero por ahora,”  _  
_

> _I know. I can sense it. Your inhibition, your fear of what will happen to you and what your friends will think of you, is slowly fading away. There are other things you will have to face, with them and for them. But for now,_  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My fingers hurt
> 
> 16.01.2018 update: they still hurt
> 
> Credit to Bland Headcanons on Tumblr for the headcanons about Pidge legitimately needing glasses and Keith's hair getting frizzy as hell in high humidity!
> 
> Also, truth: I'm born at midnight, so neither me or my parents are exactly sure if my birthday is Jan 13th or Jan 14th. I honest to god go with whichever one suits me depending on the year.
> 
> Here's [my tumblr](https://azurehyn.tumblr.com/) in case you wanna talk to me about...anything, really!


End file.
